4 Quick Social Media Marketing Strategies to Increase Engagement Fast with Real life examples

It has been thoroughly documented and intensively researched that the effects of social media marketing show that one of the most effective social media marketing strategies to increase sales and customer loyalty, is by generating customer participation – getting the input and engagement of potential clients in your campaigns.

Audi #untaggable social media campaign

There are many examples of successful use of this – from Audi’s #Untaggable campaign to have you engaged using the hashtag on social media; to Coca-Cola’s  “Share a Coke” campaign, throughout which the company produced Coke bottles with customers’ names on the labels and handed them out throughout different cities, in order to increase its exposure and engagement on social media via user generated content. Customers were then asked to share the pictures of their personalized coke bottle on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Coca-Cola “share-a-coke” social media engagement campaign

Coca-Cola first launched the campaign in Australia in 2011, but expanded it to the United States, United Kingdom, and other regions across the world. The company attributes the campaign to a 2% increase in U.S. sales after over a decade of declining revenues – but getting it right can be tricky.

Below are 4 social media marketing strategies proven to engage followers in your campaign

1. Contests: free for all

Everyone loves a good competition. Contests are one of the mainstays of brand promotion. They’ve been around almost as long as consumerism. And although the days of clipping entries out of magazines are long over, they still provide a great source of publicity and future revenue.

All the more so, since it can be so easy! There’s nothing more simple than filling your email address into a Facebook form. Users love this – no hassle, something-for-nothing opportunity.

An important caveat to keep in mind is that the prize should not be arbitrary. Rather than giving away an iPad, give away your product or a service that relates to your brand. The opportunity of winning actually increases the participant’s desire to own the product, and the winners will feel an increased loyalty to whatever it is that you’ve given them.

But there are more effective, if more involved, types of social media contests…

2. Contests: have an impact

Even better than receiving a prize, is having your means of expression appreciated and used by the company. This method, too, has been used for decades – think back to competitions to design the new logo for big brands – and services like Instagram are perfect for this format. Offer to feature followers’ images on your website, or simply to give shout outs on their social media pages. Tons of companies are doing this, and are reaping the rewards. Customer loyalty is increased, leading to current and future sales.

3. Conversation

Most of the time, what you have to say is not what matters. Your followers are far more likely to appreciate their own point of view being shared than that of your PR manager. A great way to facilitate this is to start discussions, where you propose a question and let your followers battle it out in the comments, with minimal participation on your side.

There are two types of discussions which may come in handy:

Suggestions for your products

Ask customers what they’d like to see your company doing. Even if you have no intention or capability of putting their suggestions to work, they’ll appreciate the chance you’ve given them to have their say and may get themselves excited at the possibilities.

Healthy debate around trending topics

Start a discussion about a topic that is trending in social media, the news, or even politics. Be careful with this. Try to ensure it has something to do with your brand and it doesn’t come across as click-baiting. Also, don’t use a topic that is overly contentious. Mentioning the Israel-Palestine conflict may generate loads of responses, but you’re inviting negativity, hatred, and possible accusations of bias onto your page – it’s a can of worms you don’t want to open.

4. Just plain fun

Earlier, we mentioned Coca-Cola’s  “Share a Coke” campaign – one example of a successful use of customer participation.

What was on offer?

Nothing tangible. Just a quick, fun, interaction. Use similar experiences, quizzes and games to engage your followers.

Everyone appreciates a simple distraction from the drudgery of the work day, and this makes it one of the most successful social media marketing strategies, for example: get the customers to post a photo holding your product on social media, tagged with your brand or a friend or even a brand #hashtag in exchange for a discount or for the possibility of getting in a prize draw to win your product…

Dove’s “Real Beauty Should Be Shared” contest on Facebook hit the branding bullseye.

They ran a fill in the blank contest, with photos. They asked their Fans to tell them why their friend “represents Real Beauty”, by filling in their friend’s name, and two things that make them beautiful, see video below if you haven’t yet…

Prize

In keeping with their brand, they did not offer an iPad, or extravagant prizes. The winners will get to become the next faces of Dove.

So, if you want to increase sales, customer loyalty, and followers, make use of one of these methods in your social media marketing campaigns. If done right, you’ll see rapid results, at next to nothing cost!

I hope this article has given you some helpful tips and examples together with original ideas on Social Media Marketing Strategies to Increase Engagement!

Over to you....

What do you think? Should you brand your Facebook contests? Do you think it’ll make them way more appealing to your market? Let us know your branding and engagement inducing tricks

Should you brand your Facebook contests? Do you think it’ll make them way more appealing to your market? What about user-generated content? Will it increase brand advocacy or community management needs?

Please, let us know your branding and engagement inducing tricks in the comments below.

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The business transformations these brands have undergone this year should make marketers question what is right for their own company’s strategy. Should they be experimenting with new technologies?

Are there new markets that they should be considering? Many may even be questioning whether the world really is moving in an online-only direction.

However, as marketers look ahead to 2017 and begin planning for the New Year, there a few key tips that they should keep in mind to ensure that they are making the right investments in digital, and setting the right customer experience strategies for a successful future.

Mobile sites must be king

36% of businesses don’t have a mobile site. With over four out of five adults now owning a smartphone this simply can’t be the case moving into 2017.

Ensuring that it is a successful mobile website is the next challenge, but one that is easily overcome. For those who do have a mobile site, this is also the time to check that it has all of the features that the end-user requires.

First and foremost, the mobile site is an extension of your website and is a powerful online channel – it’s an indicator of the level of service that your customers can expect.

It must be user friendly and must encompass all of the features that the user would find on a desktop. To achieve this it needs to be uncluttered – use scrollable menus, icons and toolbars that are visually striking and easy to understand.

Make it intuitive with a logical layout and concise language. The visuals should also be crisp, but equally, must be able to load quickly for smartphone users on the go.

Don’t jump on tech bandwagons

As mentioned, recent advancements in technology have made marketers question whether this is a technology that they should be investing in. However, it’s important not to jump on the bandwagon and invest in technology for technology’s sake.

Whilst 36% of marketers feel that their business needs to invest more money in innovation, it’s important to establish that they will be spending it for the right reasons, rather than just for the sake of it.

Having found that 53% of marketers find it difficult to use marketing automation software beyond the initial investment, businesses risk wasting money on new technology if their staff don’t have the skills or training to use it effectively.

Every new system or tool is a high cost to pay out, so marketers need to know that they will definitely be able to enhance customer experience with it. Collaborating with the IT team will be vital to ensure tech investments are made wisely. In addition, it has to be a technology that your customers want.

By following these principles though, planning to achieve this should become a less daunting task

Think customer first

This leads on to the next important pointer. Marketers must be thinking customer, and content, first. At the end of the day, every investment must be made from an end-user perspective – what content do your customers want, and how do they want it to be served?

The best businesses are those that look at how they can enable their customers to connect with the company better. Every investment and advancement made by a business should enrich the customer’s experience of interacting with them and the content they are served should be relevant to their relationship to the brand at that given moment.

This is key to building a positive customer relationship and allows the transaction between the two parties to become much easier.

This is a crucial time for marketers, but putting strategies in place now can lead to success in the short and long term. With industry advancements being made all the time, following the latest industry trend should not distract businesses.

They need to invest in long term customer experience strategies that will enhance their customer relationships.

By following these principles though, planning to achieve this should become a less daunting task, and marketers can ensure that every decision they make will be to the benefit of the customer, and ultimately, the business’ balance sheet

The post What digital marketing investments you need to make next year appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.

Unilad has become well known on social media for its humorous fan-sourced videos. The publisher has also experimented with more native and branded content in 2016.

According to data from Tubular Labs, the Manchester-based publisher Facebook content picked up almost one billion Facebook likes, comments and shares across the year.

Over the past 12 months, the independent media company has also clocked up over 25bn video views across YouTube, Facebook, Vine and Instagram.

Unilad, which has 55 staff split between Manchester and London, has over 23 million likes on its flagship Facebook page and several million more likes across subsidiary pages including Unilad Tech, Sound, Adventure, Fitness and Gaming.

Fellow Manchester publisher The LAD Bible was named the world’s third most engaged Facebook page last year, with the second highest number of video views.

Sharing the news via LinkedIn, Unilad co-founders Sam Bentley and Liam Harrington said the site took pride in “always being organic”, with Bentley hinting that this year’s success hasn’t been down to a big spend, saying: “we didn’t achieve that by throwing loads of money at things, but with a small team who consistently strive to be the best at what they do.”

Elsewhere, the Lad Bible and BuzzFeed’s food offering Tasty took third and fourth place respectively. Christiano Ronaldo ranked fifth with just above 457m fan interactions last year despite having the biggest Facebook fandom among the top five.

Source: https://tubularlabs.com/

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In this social-media-dominated world, the choreography is increasingly detail-oriented and high-tech. Yet it’s for this very reason that the most powerful messages remain human-centric.

The biggest trends of 2017 will help marketers engage consumers more directly by circumventing distractions and increasing their marketing reach. These tactics appeal to fundamental aspects of human nature. As such, they can help marketers create carefully coordinated campaigns and conversations where brands and consumers coalesce into a shared experience.

1. Go native or go home.

Joe Pulizzi, a self-proclaimed content-marketing evangelist, calls native advertising the “gateway drug” to content marketing. If you’re smart, you’ll jump on the native-marketing train. Native advertising is expected to expand across numerous online platforms.

Marketers love this form of paid media because it fits organically. Native advertising doesn’t disrupt the user experience, so users can’t differentiate between what is paid advertising and what is part of the site.

The content usually is useful, interesting and targeted to a specific audience -all of which makes it one of the best platforms to launch any marketing campaign.

2. Embrace content marketing.

Content marketing sometimes is confused with native marketing. Though the two often go hand in hand, content marketing is its own beast.

Native marketing is simply another way for marketers to distribute content. Content marketing is a strategic-marketing technique to create and distribute relevant information to attract a target audience. It’s not a paid-and-done transaction, like placing a native ad. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that’s best integrated into an overall marketing strategy.

It can serve as the cornerstone to nearly any marketing plan and works for all types of brands because everyone uses it differently. The key is to be consistent, staying in character for your brand. If that brand voice is clever, interesting or funny, your target audience can’t help but be engaged.

3. Find your target influencer.

We’re now in the midst of an influencer-marketing gold rush. While “influencers” always have been a leading element in marketing, they’re quickly becoming one of the most effective ways to reach customers and clients. That’s especially true on social media.

Influencer marketing gives brands the opportunity to create word-of-mouth buzz through personalities whom consumers already follow and admire. These personalities present a world of possibilities for any marketer savvy enough to channel their power. When influencers are used effectively, they create natural ways to seduce a target audience.

4. Experiment with livestreaming video and visual storytelling.

Video connects immediately to the viewer, conveying emotion and a message that often is far more memorable than static words in a newsfeed.

Livestreaming video allows you to do this all on the fly. Consider the popularity of video-sharing sites such as YouTube. More than 1 billion people use YouTube on a regular basis, a number that has increased about 40 percent since March 2014.

Facebook got into the act in a big way in April when it launched Facebook Live. The tool puts broadcast capabilities at the fingertips of everyone who uses the world’s biggest social-media network. In October, Facebook followed up with an international ad campaign to help raise awareness of how the new feature works. All of the campaign’s content was shot using Facebook Live and a phone. The demonstration was a highly effective way to showcase how the new feature allows anyone to create content, from virtually anywhere.

5. Learn how chatbots are changing our conversations.

Chatbots are a major game-changer that improves real-time, 24-hour engagement with consumers. Advances in artificial intelligence and programming enable chatbots to answer customers’ queries. The responses make sense because they’re all based in data on how the human brain works. A chatbot essentially is the sales associate who never sleeps and always is ready with a prompt reply.

If you own an iPhone, you have a chatbot in your pocket: Siri. Apple’s mainstream chatbot uses voice recognition, a preset script and deep-learning neural networks to accurately respond to users’ questions and statements.

6. Give your social content an expiration date.

Snapchat fans know there’s something alluring and even addicting about sending content that will self-destruct within a certain timeframe. Generation Z’s decreasing attention span will make expiring social content even more crucial. The element of urgency cuts through online noise and clutter, instantly capturing the user’s attention.

The premise is simple: Look now, or lose your chance forever. While this makes the content compelling and authentic, it also can prove difficult for marketers to use. Those brands savvy enough to harness its potential are finding it has an amazing upside. Influencers who are deft at this form of communication can help marketers organically integrate expiring social content into an overall strategy.

7. Make personalization a priority.

A daily dose of information overload has made people more resistant to advertising. Today’s consumers can spot obvious sales pitches or marketing come-ons, and they’ll be turned off by anything they perceive as more clamor. Targeting consumers on an individual level allows marketers to cut through the torrent of stimuli.

To capture a distracted customer’s attention, marketers must reach him or her with personalized, relevant content. It’s all about creating marketing tactics that home in on exactly what consumers are looking for or thinking about.

Tracking consumers’ habits, interests and browsing histories is key to creating strategies that get them to close the sale or purchase the service.

8. Automate your efforts.

Marketing automation is growing at an impressive rate, with 71 percent of companies currently using this tech. Marketing automation does exactly what the name suggests, using software platforms designed to put repetitive tasks on autopilot. This tool kit includes solutions for email marketing, social-media marketing, SMS and digital ads.

Apps such as Marketo and Hubspot are becoming smarter, more intuitive and more affordable. That makes them essential for any competitive marketer. In fact, 91 percent of the most successful marketers agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.

Though some might see purpose-driven content marketing as the “kumbaya” of the marketing world, there’s no denying its power to engage the audience at a higher level and drive them to participate. Brands that want to rise above the rest are finding this type of content allows them to bond with their consumers. It imbues brands with a bigger mission and creates public interest around the idea of supporting a worthy cause. It also could attract younger consumers who desire to be part of something bigger and help change the world for the better.

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It’s been well documented in this, and other websites, that this SEO strategy no longer cuts the mustard. So why is it that so many businesses still think that this is all it takes to rank well in the search engines?

There is a perception that SEO is easy, that it’s just a matter of stuffing lots of keywords in the meta tags, repeating them in the site content, getting a few paid backlinks and away you go. But, and it’s a BIG BUT, there has been a fundamental shift in SEO over the past year, driven by Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, which has changed the way websites are ranked.

Before Panda and Penguin, spammers and Black Hat SEO practitioners had increasingly been able to monopolise the search results for many popular search terms by developing various strategies (usually involving generating huge numbers of backlinks) which duped Google’s search algorithm. Ultimately this meant the quality of the search results Google produced was diluted. For a company facing stiff competition from other search engines, this meant Google had to find a way of improving the quality of its search results, or risk losing searchers (and advertisers) to its competitors waiting in the wings. The upshot of this was one of the most seismic shifts ever in the SEO landscape and one which lay waste to many sites which, up until then, had enjoyed almost exclusive domination of the search results for some massively popular keywords.

In effect, what Google has tried to do is to recalibrate its results in order to attach stronger ranking to websites whose content is relevant, informative, authoritative, helpful, credible, unique and shareworthy. Hand on heart, how many of you can confidently claim your website content fits this criteria?

By producing quality content, not only are you able to gain a stronger foothold in the search engine rankings, you will also engage your readers more effectively. This, all things being equal, should lead to higher conversions.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that someone who is searching online for a particular product, service, information or advice will gravitate towards sites which contain unique insights into a particular topic, or offer an alternative angle or opinion. Readers will tend to stay on these sites for longer (hence stronger engagement) which is in itself an important determinant in Google’s ranking calculation.

The problem is, producing quality content takes time, planning and a certain amount of writing ability. Many small businesses in particular would find the process of producing quality content a little daunting. But, in reality, the process isn’t as difficult as some might think.

Say, for exmaple, you operated a website for a small plumbing business (note, this strategy works equally well for any service provider). What you need to do is compile a list of the pain points or information topics your prospective customers are seeking answers for online. A good tip is to read through plumbing related posts on discussion forums such as boards.ie or askaboutmoney.com. Here you will find a huge source of “ready made” article topics for your website, targetted at exactly the sort of problems and queries your prospects are experiencing right now.

You could even collate a number of the most frequently discussed topics and write a longer, more in depth article titled something like “The ten most common plumbing problems you can fix yourself.” If written well, a post such as this should establish the business as an authority in the eyes of your prospects. These type of “Top ten list” posts are frequently shared on social media platforms and bookmarking websites so have potential to go viral, generating good quality organic backlinks. These positive social media signals and links will boost your website’s visibility in Google and other search engines for your main subject area. You could boost your article’s viral potential even further by producing a Youtube video on the same subject, along with a transcript of the “keyword-rich” content (to further boost SEO).

There are countless sources of inspiration for quality articles on any subject. You just need to adopt the same thought processes and search strategies as your customers are using and you will come across a raft of possibilities. Here are a few more ideas you could use:

• Speak to your current customers. Ask what problems they are having difficulty resolving or finding information about.
• Use Twitter search to find out what topics are trending.
• Interview an authority in your field and get their views on specific issues.
• Review a product, or range of products, and share your views.
• Play devil’s advocate and challenge the perceived wisdom around a newsworthy topic.
• Discuss your failures and show how these were overcome. People love an honest tryer!
• Get on to Youtube and see which videos around your industry are generating the most interest and comments.

Once you get into the habit of writing regularly about subjects that interest your customers, the traffic will follow. It may take time, and you will need to have patience, but your efforts will eventually pay off.

To get the most return out of this increased traffic, you must ensure the rest of your site has the tools to convert your browsers from prospects to customers.

The post Why Your Website Isn’t Getting Any Traffic (& How You Can Fix It). appeared first on Digital Marketing Blog.

Tip #1

Choose a ‘keyword rich’ domain name. If you’re a landscape gardener, servicing clients in the Limerick City/County area, a domain name such as “landscapinglimerick.com” would be perfect.

Tip #2

Choose an Irish web hosting company, such as Blacknight. If you’re focusing on the Irish market, it’s essential that your hosting server has an Irish geographic IP address.

Tip #3

Build your website on the WordPress CMS platform. Very user friendly, some great integrated SEO functionality and plenty of themes & plugins available to create a professional looking site.

Tip #4

Make sure you activate SEO friendly permalink settings in WordPress admin. I adopt the custom structure “/%postname%/” on virtually all my websites.

Tip #5

Install the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast and follow the plugin configuration instructions here

Tip #6

Write optimised meta titles & descriptions for each of your pages & posts.

Tip #7

Optimise each of your pages & posts for a specific keyword/search phrase. Include the main phrase you’re targetting in the meta title & description and also the first paragraph of your content. Don’t use the keyword too often within the content as Google may interpret this as ‘keyword-stuffing’ which could result in a penalty.

Tip #8

Set up a blog page within your WordPress website and publish relevant, informative articles regularly. Using our landscape gardener example, you could post articles about common landscaping/gardening problems such as ‘best time to sow a lawn’ or ‘best bedding plants for cold weather’. The trick is to publish content which mirrors the information your prospective customers/clients are searching for online. By doing this, you will gain traffic from the SEO pull of your content and, perhaps more importantly, your content has a good chance of being shared and linked to across social networks which will establish you as the ‘go to’ person in your particular industry and location.

Tip #9

Set up a Google Places for Business listing. Online searches for services are often appended with a geographical location, e.g. ‘landscaping limerick’. If there are relatively few suppliers of these services in your area, there’s a good chance you will get a fairly high listing within Google’s geographic search results. As these appear above the organic results, this is a great way of getting near the top of Google even if your website is relatively new.

Tip #10

Install Google Analytics tracking code to monitor your traffic and enable you to gauge where your visitors are coming from and how they are engaging with your site.

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New year’s resolutions are not just about our personal goals, so it may be the ideal moment to focus on your business goals and seek for the best ways to boost your SEO presence to improve authority, value and ranking.

If you’re wondering how to start fixing your SEO for 2017, here are a few suggestions you might find useful.

Add value

As simple as it sounds, it’s important to create content that adds value, while it maintains its relevance for the target audience.

It’s not just about creating quality content, but also about knowing your audience, to the extent that the content is useful and has more chances to be ranked higher in the search results for the relevant queries.

Quick tips to add more value with your content:

• Examine your existing content and find the most popular topics
• Learn more about your audience and find the questions that you’re going to answer
• Find the best way to use combine timing and context, in a way that you’ll be able to beat your competitors
• Do not hesitate to expand your niche area, provided that you’re still useful for your target audience

Facilitate the browsing experience

User experience is critical to SEO, so it may be a good idea to test how it affects the traffic to your site.

In fact, user experience starts even before the user visits your site and according to Forrester, 93% of online experiences start with a search.

Thus, it’s important to proceed to the necessary tweaks that ensure a smooth visit:

• Test your site’s link and fix the broken links to minimise the error pages or the duplicate content
• Your content should be appealing both for users and search engines and thus, both readability and crawlability should be taken into consideration
• The navigation should help the user browse the pages without problems. From the menu structure to the link structure and the page’s design, even a slight detail may impact the user experience
• A page’s speed is crucial, so don’t forget testing it from time to time. From heavy images to unnecessary scripts, there is always a reason that your site gets slow.
• AMP may also be relevant to your site and Google seems to prefer the pages that start using it. Is it time to experiment with it?

Invest more time in your content

It was already clear from 2016 that search engines focus on the actual content rather than its optimisation.

There’s no need to spend more time on the optimisation if your content is not appealing enough for your audience.

Monitor the keywords, the site’s stats, the levels of engagement on each topic and find what users really expect from your page.

Think of new ideas to expand your content, or even to invest in evergreen content, and make sure you think like a reader, rather than a search engine.

Are the topics and the structure appealing to your target audience?

Remember, the combination of seamless user experience with quality content can have a very positive impact on your SEO rankings.

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