Social Media

“I made a post on Facebook. Why don’t I have 1000 Likes?”

Have you ever walked into a room full of people and whispered your name, hoping for everyone to turn and flock to you? It seems that many business owners believe that, because their business is unique, it will auto-magically stand out in the crowded sea of social media ships. The timeline goes as such: they register their social media profiles, make a few posts, and sit back and wonder why no one is following, liking or otherwise engaging with them.

3 Key Misconceptions

There are three key misconceptions many businesses are making when they realize they should be leveraging social media to grow their business.

We’ll call the first misconception the “illusion of presence”.

There is a widely held misconception that being present on social media is enough. As this misconception goes, the assumption is that businesses get points just for showing up (on social media). Not to be platitudinous, but being successful as a business takes commitment and hard work; social media, like any digital marketing, also takes planning, creativity, and dedication. Showing up is not good enough.

The second misconception is that businesses often feel that when they do start to build an audience, they should talk only about themselves and how great they are.

Have you ever known someone like that? At first it’s fine, but after a while it becomes intolerable and alienating when they appear uninterested in what you like, want, feel, or care about. On social media, this manifests as businesses posting only about what they are doing, selling, or interested in without the understanding that social media, like walking into a crowed room, requires that they engage, talk, query, and generally appear interested in others. This two-way communication is the distinction between being social, rather than doing social (media).

The third misconception is the most pernicious. Some people believe that social media influencers are quietly guarding the secret social media button that once pushed causes likes and followers to fall from the sky. For most industries, the social media landscape is crowded. You are not a unique snowflake, until you can provide value to your audience. Moreover, and more importantly, these platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram) are advertising platforms. They are a means to reach greater numbers of people in a more cost effective manner than traditional advertising. Just because it is free to create an account does not mean it’s not pay-to-play for (most) businesses.

There is no magic button, no single recipe that defines success; there is no mysterious formula that social media influencers have cooked up and are unwilling to share. Doesn’t exist. Research, dedication, monitoring, planning, and experimentation are the answer.

These misconceptions are the albatross hanging around the neck of your social media success. But, you ask, how can I be successful on social?

Top three recommendations

1. Provide value

Give your audience something engaging, interesting, and relevant to them. How can you tell which types of content resonate with your audience? Check out your analytics and monitor the engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares) on your content to discern potential new content development opportunities.

2. Distinguish yourself from your competitors

Try video, be creative, and experiment. Have you ever tried Instagram Memories or Facebook Live? If not, maybe you should. They are a great way to generate live content and provide a look “behind-the-scenes”. If you are not sure what Memories or Facebook Live are or how to use them, we can help.

3. Increase your reach and presence using ads

Using Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter ads can accelerate your profile growth and visibility. They can draw users back to your website or lead them to your profile. They are highly customizable, trackable, and editable, on-the-fly.

Want to learn more about how social media can help your business grow? Let’s chat!

Social Media

As part of the social media team here at Treefrog, conducting social media analyses when receiving a new client has become second nature to me. What’s a social media analysis, you ask? Well, truth be told, you’ve probably conducted a few yourself. That time you found the Instagram account of that cute Starbucks barista and spent a few more minutes than you’d like to admit scrolling down their feed, creeping their photos, and praying to the thumb gods for no accidental double-tap…you were kind-of conducting a social media analysis.

Social media competitive analyses are a great way to get information. Questions like, “What is this brand’s personality?”, “Who is their target audience?”, and “Is cute Barista Alex single?” can be answered through each post, each photo, and each comment.

After having done a number of these analyses, something very disturbing has become clear to me: many companies seem to think it’s okay to talk only about themselves on social. Post after post it’s “Hey, check out OUR website!”, or, “This is what WE sell! Buy it now!”, or, “Here’s OUR phone number to learn more about US!”

To put this into perspective, imagine stumbling on Cute Barista Alex’s Facebook page and finding the only thing Alex shares are selfies and statuses about what he’s currently doing. In your eyes, Alex might start looking a little self-absorbed and a lot less cute. In contrast, imagine finding Alex’s Facebook page and seeing he’s shared information about upcoming local volunteer opportunities, posted links for “Study Time” playlists for fellow students during exam week, and has commented on every “Happy Birthday!” post he received to say thank you and wish each person well. Suddenly your interest is further peaked; he’s into music, he’s involved in a  great community, he has plenty of meaningful relationships in his life…and you already know your wedding photos are going to be SO Pinterest-worthy. Companies need to be the Alex we want to marry! They need to show us they care about more than just themselves. So if you’re a brand reading this and wondering how you can make sure your audience falls in love with you, this is what we tell all our clients during social media training: Follow the Rule of Thirds.

The Rule of Thirds states that the content you share on your company’s social channels should be evenly divided as such: 1/3 of it should be promotional, 1/3 should be valuable, and 1/3 should be engaging.

Promotional

This is the one that most companies already have a firm grasp on. This is the content that overtly pushes your goal, such as selling your newest product, or getting people to attend your upcoming event. This content is important because, first and foremost, you are a business and conversions are what keep you up and running. Sharing links to your website’s products and services page or e-flyers for in-store promotion helps your audience find out vital information they need to make a transaction (e.g. Where? How?).

Something to keep in mind is that this content, if done excessively, can come off as too pushy, too self-motivating, and too corporate (something consumers are turning their noses up at nowadays).

Valuable

This content will help balance out your promotional content and ensure your company doesn’t look too “Me, me, me!” That’s because this content revolves around your viewer and what’s important and meaningful to them, whether it’s a news article that they might be interested in, or links to exciting events in their city. A clever way to still tie this kind of content to your brand so it doesn’t seem random and out-of-place is to think about themes around your brand and share content with similar themes. For example, an auto shop in a suburban area populated with new families could share a magazine article about road trip tips for parents with young children.

Engaging

This content will also help to make sure your feed doesn’t come off as too promotional. Similar to valuable content, engaging content takes a step back from “Me, me, me!” and instead says, “We”. Through this type of content, you create an opportunity for two-way interaction between your viewer and your brand. A fashion brand might tweet, “Seems like suede pants are making a comeback. Is this a fashion YAY or NAY to you?”, inviting their followers to tweet back at them and participate in discussion on the topic. It’s a great way to show your audience that you care about what they have to say, solidify meaningful relationships, and gain loyal fans.

So, next time you’re trying to decide what to post on your company’s social media page, scroll down and see what type of content you could use some more of. Use the Rule of Thirds to even things out and make your audience swoon…we hear the cash registers dinging and the wedding bells ringing already.

Want to learn more? We’d love to chat!

Your company’s social strategy needs to be about more than simply chasing click-thrus or likes and growing follower counts

Engaging with existing and prospective customers on social networks effectively, growing those audiences, and racking up followers and ‘likes’ or stars is a matter of providing audiences with useful and engaging content. But the number of followers you have, and the amount of likes and stars you accumulate shouldn’t be your primary goal. Far from it.

Pardon the buzzword, but on social channels, engaging effectively with people requires producing what’s known as “snackable content” (short-form content that is easily and quickly consumed whether on a mobile device or otherwise; like a tweet, short video, or an infographic). At other times, and depending on the subject and social platform, it also means consistently producing long-form and long-tail content of high quality that is either educational, informative, or which provides value to your intended audience in some way. After all, as business strategist and author Dion Hinchcliffe once wrote, “we need to understand that digital engagement is a moving target.” Indeed.

Recognizing and understanding that necessity is crucial to evolving your company into what’s known as a “next-generation enterprise.” Certainly, the ongoing development of various technologies – social tools, analytics, big data, the mobile web, the Internet of Things – and their convergence with digital marketing, as well as the personalization of content, is the key to cultivating and unleashing your business’s digital DNA.

“Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person – a real person you know, or an imagined person – and write to that one.”
– JOHN STEINBECK

Making the Social Transformation

It’s worthwhile to note in its “Building Your Digital DNA” report, professional services consultancy Deloitte recommends companies consider three core factors when looking to enhance their digital maturity levels: leadership, talent management, and organizational design.

Concerning organizational design, the report states, “Culturally open, dynamic, and flexible structures built on mutual trust are the basis for the information economy, and should be a long-term aspiration for many organizations.”

Thus, becoming what’s often referred to in digital marketing circles as a “social business” does not mean creating a company profile on every social network under the sun and blaring out your marketing messages with wild abandon. Furthermore, your social media marketing strategy should not be concocted outside of your overall marketing blueprint. It’s an integral part of that plan, not an afterthought or an outlier.

Cultivating your digital DNA and contending with rapid change requires asking questions about how and what your firm does what it does, why it matters, and to whom. Doing so will not only help you define a thoughtful, well-rounded digital marketing strategy, but it will also spur your employees to think of new innovative ways to do their jobs, and in turn, grow your business.

Enabling New Business Opportunities

Your social strategy needs to be bold and in-depth. It needs to be about more than simply chasing click-thrus and growing follower counts. Using social media tools effectively for business is not a meaningless popularity contest. It demands less navel-gazing and more listening to what your audience is saying. To put it another way, no one cares about photos of your grinning employees at a conference they’re attending, posted without context. They are more likely to care about what those employees think about or heard from others on any given subject at that event.

If it’s a broader audience you’re after, then you need to put their interests and concerns at the forefront of your social strategy. You need to think of your followers or readers as prized acquaintances that must be respected and intelligently engaged. That may require your company to adapt and quickly to address their concerns or satisfy their demand for knowledge as it relates to your business’s products, services, or industry.

Did you know that the Canada-Ontario Jobs Grant can provide your business with funding to train your team on how to use social media effectively? If you need assistance charting a new course for your organization’s social strategy, let’s chat.

Taking a more personal, magnified approach to your marketing efforts can yield impressive results

The notion of influencer marketing has gained significant traction in the global marketing community over the last few years and for good reason: in our social media-driven world, influencer or influence marketing is an increasingly important customer acquisition and retention strategy.

What is influencer marketing? It’s a practice that involves focusing your social media outreach efforts on one person or a specific group of people who may be able to influence others to buy your products or services. Ideally, the followers of these influencers may become your most ardent and loyal customers. As you and community influencers help to create advocates, these advocates add their voluntary efforts on social networks to promote your business to your broader marketing strategy. But to encourage people to become your third-party influence marketers, you need to pay close attention to them first.

According to data contained in We Are Social’s “Digital 2016” report, there are more than 2.3 billion daily active social media users. Of that massive worldwide audience, users prefer knowledgeable online influencers instead of traditional advertising tactics. Additionally, and according to data from MDG Advertising, 70% of internet users want to learn about products through content rather than through traditional advertisements.

“Solving the problem means helping the customer to understand why you’re the best person for the job.”
– CHRIS MURRAY

Personalized Messaging Turns Customers into Fans

It’s common knowledge that word-of-mouth referrals from friends and family are typically the major driver of consumers’ purchasing decisions. Data gathered by McKinsey & Company found word-of-mouth referrals from a trusted source is the primary influential factor behind 20% to 50% of all consumer purchasing decisions. And influencer marketing is the evolution of the word-of-mouth methodology through socially targeted messaging or personalization.

In both business-to-business (B2B) business-to-consumer (B2C) industry verticals, customers crave personalized messages from the brands to which they have an intellectual or emotional connection. It’s an excellent way to keep your existing customer base and your business partners engaged, and it should be a cornerstone of your social media marketing efforts.

Targeted personalized messaging boosts brand loyalty, and it can inspire delighted customers to become evangelists or influencers who will speak well of your business on social networks. That, in turn, will help grow your audience, and ultimately increase sales.

Why Influencer Marketing Matters

There are a few ways third-party influencer marketers can help your brand grow its sphere of influence and, over time, its revenues:

• They have access to a different and possibly a larger audience than your company does
• High-quality content you share online may not be taken at face value, but if an influencer shares it, it’s more likely you’ll get the click-thrus you desire
• It will help you build meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your customers

Do you want to learn how your organization can leverage the power of influencer marketing to grow your revenues? Drop us a line.

Are you avoiding using social tools to generate business? You’re missing out on a world of opportunities

In 2016, your company and employees ought to be using social media tools consistently to communicate with your existing clients, and get involved in online conversations with the wider world. Why? Because your business’s fortunes – and your employees’ livelihoods – depend on it.

More than 2 billion people use social media tools on a daily basis. Nowadays, even a small, independent startup is locked in intense competition with enterprises of all sizes worldwide. After all, the Internet knows no regional or national boundaries. Ergo, all businesses are international businesses, and the ones that are using social media effectively, have a competitive edge over those that are not.

Furthermore, companies that use social media tools regularly and smartly can generate more sales or potential sales. An integral part of the sales process involves developing relationships, and some social channels can help you and your sales team cultivate new leads or prospects, and find out what people are saying about your brand as well as your competition.

Why Your Business Needs to Embrace Social Media

There are five valuable points to consider as you transition your business to become a social business:

• Facebook at Work. Not only is Facebook the English-speaking world’s most popular social platform, but it’s also continuing to grow at a healthy clip. Facebook at Work is the platform’s soon-to-be-released tool that will allow companies to create internal social networks among employees. That pits Facebook against the likes of Slack, Socialcast, Yammer and countless others eager to lead the enterprise social space. Will this be the so-called “killer app” that rings the death knell for our reliance on email? Time will tell. In any event, it’s likely to induce Facebook holdouts on your team to become more familiar with the network, and over time, turn them on to engaging with the world outside the office walls in a responsible manner.
• Transform your employees into brand ambassadors. When it comes to promoting your business organically, there are no greater influencers in the world than the people who work with and for you. You may already have a social media team or coordinator and a public relations professional doing much of the heavy lifting, but garnering good online or public relations should be every employees’ responsibility.
• Social media drives analytics. Each social network provides analytics tools, and the data these provide can be weighed alongside your website’s performance that’s tracked by Google Analytics. Plus, you can plug your social channels into Google Analytics for additional insights. It’s not a secret that smart business decisions are based on quantifiable data. Social data can help you identify new potential clients, provide insight into the content you’re sharing, and if/how it resonates with your intended audience.
• Understand the role of social pay-per-click. Advertising via social media isn’t taboo provided you’re doing it properly. Regarding social pay-per-click (PPC), it’s simply a matter of advertising on a social network be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other platform. Different social networks provide different click-thru percentages depending on the nature of the ad, and the audience you’re targeting (e.g. if you’re selling to teenagers, don’t advertise on LinkedIn). Social PPC is unique from search engine PPC in that social PPC is tailored directly to users based on their interests, not solely on what they have searched for. It’s estimated social ad spending will grow in 2016 to US$24.2 billion, up from $19.8 billion in 2015.
• Social-based video is exploding. In 2015, Facebook doubled its daily video views to approximately 8 billion, surpassing the hits YouTube got. Other social networks from Twitter to Snapchat have also rolled out video-sharing features. Clearly, the future of social and digital marketing is branded video content, and its influence will continue to grow year-over-year. While many companies balk at paying for professional video production, there are more cost-effective alternatives cropping up all the time.

“All businesses are international businesses, and the ones that are using social media effectively, have a competitive edge over those that are not.”

Never Forget Your Audience

What’s critical to remember when using any social channel is your audience – both your existing clients and the general public. Here’s a simple rule of thumb for using social media: be helpful, be genuine, and create value. In other words, transform your company’s marketing messages by focusing more on being human to connect effectively with others intellectually or emotionally.

Personalize your social posts to create genuine, long-lasting relationships or connections with existing and prospective clients. Understand the way your audience wants to be spoken to, and the topics they care most about. Moreover, use different content and different tones of conversation for each social platform that you’re sharing content on.

The tsunami of random or relentless marketing messages that people are swamped by on a daily basis simply encourages people to tune out. If you’re producing engaging content that is truly helpful and adds value to other people’s lives in some way, then they won’t dismiss your content as an annoying interruption. Your social content should always be educational or entertaining. We recommend spending one-third of your time on social channels doing promotions, one-third providing value-added content, and one-third engaging with others. Most importantly, as part of your overall digital ecosystem, your social content needs to mesh with your company’s website messaging, and help to support overall business growth.

Have questions about how you can transform your business into a more social business? Get in touch.

We’ve got the people, the expertise, and the technologies to help you achieve your strategic goals using social media.

Growing your social media presence takes time and effort, and it can be tempting to succumb to the concept of ‘buying followers’ to speed things up. However, this does more harm than good.

Here are five reasons you shouldn’t consider buying followers for your social media accounts:

1.    This is not your real audience.

These followers are not your customers or clients, if they are even real people. They will not be spending money on your products or services and they will not be engaging with your content. The goal of your social media presence should not be to have the biggest following; it should be to connect with your customers regularly so that you are top of mind for them.

2.    Your engagement will decrease.

Adding followers that don’t interact with your account results in your overall engagement rate decreasing. On some platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, this will work against you. Having a low engagement rate tells Facebook and Instagram’s algorithm that your followers aren’t interested in your posts. This means the chances of your posts appearing organically into your followers’ news feeds will decrease.

3.    You become a platform for spam.

Once you start incorporating fake followers into your community, those fake followers can target your genuine customers with their own spam. If your brand becomes known for spamming followers with irrelevant nonsense, you will begin to lose your real and genuine followers.

4.    Your reputation gets jeopardized.

Your online reputation is everything, as one of the pillars of a great brand is transparency. Being discovered for buying fake followers can be humiliating for your brand and can result in your real customers losing trust in you.

5.    It goes against the terms of conditions.

Buying followers is against the terms of service of almost every major social media network. These companies have strong policies against ‘fake followers’ and will actively delete or ban accounts that use services to buy fake followers and likes.

Buying fake followers cannot only destroy your brand, but it can also put your entire company at risk. Getting banned from popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, will mean you can no longer access major marketing channels.

Social media brand building takes a lot of time and effort, but if you have a strong strategy in place, and work hard to gain followers organically, you can still be successful amongst your strong competitors.