7 Social Media Marketing Success Tips for Your Business

The role of social media in our lives is no longer limited to just sharing your story and life events to everyone or getting in touch with your long-lost relatives or forgotten classmates from high school. Social media has extended its importance into the business industry. If you want to be successful with your business, social media plays a very important role in achieving this goal.

Social Media serves as an easy and accessible platform where you can market your business, get potential new customers, keep in touch with your local supporters and advertise your brand. For a small entrepreneur who has only started with their own business, it would be wise to dive into the world of social media and use its power to your full advantage.

Here are some tips on how to maximize social media as a marketing tool for your business:

1. Be consistent – When you market your company, it is important that your brand voice is clear and consistent. Brand consistency plays a vital role in social media, as you want your company’s image to be consistent and similar throughout the multi-platform social media experience. Being consistent with the content of your social media posts strengthens recall of your brand name. You want your product to be easily identified by a specific tag-line or personality. An inability to maintain consistency in your social media accounts puts you at risk for losing the interest of your avid supporters, because they get confused with the content of your product or might find it unappealing.
   

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2. Social Media Marketing is Going Mobile–Almost all people use their smartphones when using social media. We live in a world where we can easily share events in real. Consumers can get access to products conveniently by just flipping through their smartphones. Use this channel as a marketing strategy to reach out to your current supporters and gain new customers.
   

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3. Engage with Social Media Influencers and Bloggers – Social media influencers and bloggers are people that have an established online reputation and have gained a large amount of followers. Once you have identified your social media influencers, it’s time to connect with them and start a conversation through the content that they are sharing. It is also important that you maintain your relationship with them by constantly following and engaging with them through the content that they share. Being constantly engaged with social media influencers and bloggers can increase the awareness of your brand, increase your reputation and popularity online and increase awareness or improve SEO traffic.
   

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4. Analyze Past Content to Improve Posts – Social media is an affordable platform where you can advertise your brand or product without having to spend a lot of money. To attract more followers though, the content of your social media should be engaging and interesting. Take time to review your previous posts in order to see what has and hasn’t worked, so that you can use that information to inform how you market yourself moving forward. Analyze what is missing on historic posts and use this as an opportunity to get more followers on your future posts. Maybe that post would have gotten more likes if you incorporated an interesting photo or video? Use trial and error to understand what will resonate the most with your followers.
   

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5. Use Social Updates to Write Blog Posts – A large number of business owners today have turned to blogging as another platform to market their brand or product. Blogging is worth your investment, since original online content is very important in creating your digital footprint and building your brand. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms are important channels for your marketing strategy. Your blog posts can reach a large portion of your online audience through the use of viral tools like such as liking and sharing of posts through social media. In order to get unlimited mileage online, your blog should be well-written and include relatable content.
   

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6. Start an Employee Advocacy Program – Employees are known to be the biggest marketing asset your brand can have. Employee advocacy refers to the exposure that your employees generate for brands using their own online assets. This might include chat, email, forums, discussion, boards and of course, social media. The reach of your employees could possibly be beyond your own brand’s reach and beyond the platforms that you are currently on. To get more employees to promote your product through social media, you can give out incentives or perks that will reward them for being an ambassador of your brand.
   

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7. Find a balance between popularity and business–In order for your business to gain major followers, the content that you share on social media should be something that consumers can easily relate to in order to engage their interest. Make sure that your posts include a well-balanced blend of entertainment and business-oriented content. Keep things interesting and always make sure that you are consistent with your brand voice.

You do not need to be an expert of all the ins and outs of social media to be able to use it to its full potential as you promote your. Just follow some or all of the tips above and you will be able to maximize the social media channels to your brand’s advantage.

About the Author:  Andy Bell is an internet marketer, blogger and automation geek. He has reviewed various email automation services and other software, which you can find on his website.

4 New Live Examples To Get Inspired By

This week, we’ve got a handful of new promotions to share with you from brands that are located all over the world who are using Heyo’s Promotions Platform. As you’re starting to plan your next contest or sweepstakes, take a look at these ones to get inspired!

Spartan Race – Landing Page with Video 

Healthy Habit – Random Draw Sweepstakes in Greek.

Purity Organic  – Random Draw Sweepstakes With Countdown Clock.

Butcher Block Co – Random Draw Sweepstakes With Countdown Clock.

Want to learn more about our products and services, or brainstorm with a member of our team on your next promotion? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.

Unique New Promotions from Bahama Breeze and Air Canada

It’s always fun to see how brands bring their campaigns to life in new and exciting ways. This week, we launched a few promotions with Bahama Breeze and Air Canada that do a great job of engaging their audiences with interesting user experiences.

Bahama Breeze: Rumtoberfest Instant Win Sweepstakes

To promote the restaurant’s month-long Rumtoberfest celebration, Bahama Breeze launched a fun and engaging Instant Win Sweepstakes to drive awareness. This promotion was built using Heyo’s Self-Serve Platform, and also features a custom CRM integration, which creates a seamless database management solution for the brand.

Bahama Breeze: Pirate Personality Quiz

To create an additional engagement opportunity for their audience and drive more awareness of the Rumtoberfest event, Bahama Breeze leveraged Heyo’s Personality Quiz App, also available on our Self-Serve Platform, to give their customers a fun and unique way to participate in the restaurant’s brand conversation.

Bahama Breeze: Rumtoberfest Photo Sweepstakes

To round out its social marketing efforts in support of the Rumtoberfest celebration, Bahama Breeze also launched a photo sweepstakes for a chance to win a week-long Caribbean cruise. This promotion was also built using Votigo’s Self-Serve Platform and features #Hashtag entry, mobile responsive design, content moderation and social sharing. The combination of all three promotional experiences should do a great job at driving awareness of and participation in Rumtoberfest!

Air Canada Trivia Sweepstakes 

Air Canada launched their ’14 Days to Win’ promotion  as a way to engage with and incentivize travel agents to book travel with the airline. The promotion was built by Votigo’s talented Full-Service Development Team and features multi-language display, custom trivia questions after registration, daily rotating prizes in the header, and dynamic message display based on the user’s answers.

Want to learn more about our products and services, or brainstorm with a member of our team on your next promotion? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.

5 Tips To Make Your Content Worth Sharing

Did you know that every day, more than 2 million pieces of content are published on the Internet? From blog posts, articles, and reviews all the way to e-books, white papers, and special reports – content marketers are busting their chops to get noticed amongst the internet clutter.

This fact is surprising in and of itself, but what’s truly shocking is that most of those content marketers actually have no idea what they’re doing. Recent research done by Moz and Hubspot reveals that 75 % of randomly selected posts and articles found on the Internet have zero links and shares – they are completely off the grid.

Basically, they are totally irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. They’re usefulness in terms of SEO, establishing the company as a thought-leader in the industry, or exposure is seriously crippled.

The same study reveals that nearly 85 % of published content is redundant – rehash after rehash of the same old information that hasn’t been built on or added to in any significant way to make it more appealing to readers.

In order to avoid these pitfalls and start creating content that is shareable and that attracts links it is important to stick to some proven and tested methods of content creation.

Not surprisingly, originality doesn’t play a huge part here. It’s very difficult to come up with something completely new on a daily basis. However, content presentation, format, and style, and emotional triggers do play a large part in getting those shares you want so badly.

Following these 5 simple rules will ensure that your content gets picked up more readily on social media networks or anywhere else on the Internet and can be a ticket to your content going viral:

1. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, WRITE LISTS

Visual content gets easily devoured, especially when it’s good. However, sometimes it’s not possible to do an infographic, a video or a presentation and you just have to sit down and write something.

When that happens, try to find an angle that allows you to present your information in the form of a list. Lists are easy on the eyes; the content is broken up into chewable pieces that are more palatable and people know what to expect the moment they see the title.

Lists present information in a way that is easier for people to comprehend. If you can’t write up your article as a list at least try adding some bullet points whenever you have to write stringy sentences that might be difficult to comprehend or would require the readers go through them more than once – people simply don’t have the time to make the effort.

2. EVOKE EMOTIONS

Your content should aim at four specific emotions:

• Awe-inspiring
• Surprising
• Elating
• Amusing/positive

People tend not to share sad or outrageous content – most of us don’t want other people to experience the same negative emotion we did.

On the other hand, everyone likes to be amused or surprised, or inspired by something – that is why content that evokes those types of positive emotions gets picked up and shared more easily.

Bottom line: if a piece of content makes you feel something while you’re reading or watching it, there’s a good chance that other people will feel it too. Always try to spice things up a bit through good storytelling and emotional triggers.

3. KNOW YOUR READERS

A lot of times a piece of content falls flat on its face because content creators forget the audience they are writing for. People respond better to content that is in sync with who they are and what they want to accomplish. In most cases, people share content that confirms an image of themselves they want to project outwards.

People want to be seen as caring, fun, smart, rich, inspiring, clever – and a whole bunch of other things. Create a persona of your average reader (or create 5 if your target audiences are diverse) and find out what is the image of their ideal self that they are projecting to the public. Use that to create great content and watch those share numbers skyrocket!

4. BE USEFUL

Useful content gets shared – period. It’s how most people are wired; they see something helpful and they want other people to see it too. It might be out of the goodness of their heart or they want to appear more knowledgeable than their friends – it really doesn’t matter, shares are shares.

What matters here is that your content is the most helpful they can find on the given subject. Make your how-to articles most detailed and your tutorial videos packed with easy-to-follow information and you will be able to get all the shares you need.

5. PLAY THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Whenever there is a hot topic on the internet, content creators flock to it in an effort to drive some traffic to their blogs, media sites, or social media platforms. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that except that after a while everything becomes a blur and all those articles or videos start looking like boring copies of each other.

A better approach to this is to invest some time in studying the topic and creating something that has a different angle. Don’t be afraid to swim against the current sometimes – taking a controversial stance on something differentiates you and it’s guaranteed to spark a debate.

6 Elements of a Perfectly Optimized Social Media Page

Social media sites are among the most effective platforms for getting online exposure and relevant traffic to your business website. More and more people are joining popular social networks to express their thoughts, opinions and memories with friends, while many users also join social media networks so that they can endorse the products and services they like.

Why not reach them on the social networks where they are already spending time and maximize your business revenue while you’re at it? Here are some of the tools and strategies that can help you optimize your social media pages to attract more people to join your brand community.

1. USE YOUR BRAND LOGO AS A PROFILE IMAGE

Businesses are recognized by a meaningful logo that also appears on all documentation and correspondence mediums. The social networks expose your business to your targeted audience which means you can easily get your logos recognized along with the official profile.

Some experts argue that the use of an image of a business representative makes a business page more personal and authentic. The use of a personal picture is commonly seen by bloggers, service providers or owners of small size businesses. These people need the exposure to their personality, skills and expertise for a selected group of people. However, it is recommended to use a logo if you have an established brand or a renowned business. Additionally, it is important to note that the logo needs to be consistent across all of your social accounts.

2. USE YOUR COMPANY NAME AS THE PROFILE NAME

People on social networks are inclined to search keywords or names of their favorite brands, that’s why companies have to use real product names as user IDs/profile names.

Another benefit of using a company name as the username is that the fan following loves to refer to the products or services they use by mentioning them in posts and comments. They can easily tag these names and give you more brand exposure.

3. BE STRATEGIC WHEN IT COMES TO THE FREQUENCY OF YOUR POSTS

A common perception about a social network is to make a maximum number of posts for staying active among the users. That of course is not true for all the platforms. For example, for a Facebook business page, 6-7 posts are more than enough for a week, whereas your Twitter profile may require 6-7 tweets on a daily basis. At the end of the day, it is always more about quality than it is about quantity. Make sure you are providing your audience with meaningful and relevant content and you will be more successful.

4. SIMPLIFY YOUR LINKS

The link addresses of your website helps visitors know what the page they are going to is about. It may include a part of structuring URLs for better visibility and understanding on social media, whereas to make it more appealing and clickable you need to shorten them as well. Shortening a URL can also reveal the number of traffic you are getting from a specific account, page or profile.

The use of a link address varies between different social networks as it may display a preview of your website which is more appealing that just a URL. While some of the networks only grab the images of your product or CMS pages to pin them to an audience.

You can also add the website link in the page description so that a user can click on it after reading about your business, whereas a separate space is also provided for a URL which is worthy to use.

5. USE HIGH-QUALITY IMAGES

Visual content has proven to be more interactive and engaging than other forms of content. This means high-quality images of the products or info-graphics with well-researched data composed in a well-presented manner.

Visual content is said to be more captivating for users as they can easily absorb the information and get connected without compromising their time in reading.

6. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ACTIVE ADMINISTRATORS AND EDITORS

The excessive use of social media on mobile devices has provided a quick search tool for customers to find a company and ask them directly what they want. Nowadays, the presence of your business is enough for reaching customers, but you need to have an active administration to reply to their comments and private messages.

Social networks give people access to the profile pages for instant messaging since visiting your website and filling out a contact form is typically more time consuming. Better profile optimization also accounts for the time you take in replying to a message. This can become quite embarrassing if a user continuously contacts your staff and gets no response.

Try to post information and useful content, in order to keep your visitors engaged. Also consider the use of social contests and giveaways. The comment section can also help you grab users’ attention by replying to them with the information they are looking for.

CONCLUSION

The blending of social pages with a business’s core marketing activities has revealed that the creation of profiles is only valuable if you take the latest trends and consumer behaviors into consideration. Start by implementing the above tips to get going towards the optimization of a successful social media page.

Exciting New Promotions from State Farm, Pringles and The Co-Operators

UGC Contests and Quiz Campaigns are a great way to engage your audience and drive meaningful brand conversation and awareness. Here are three brand-new promotions from State Farm, Pringles and The Co-Operators to help inspire you as you start planning your next promotion.

State Farm “Neighborhood Assist” Custom Contest

The State Farm Neighborhood Assist Program helps worthwhile nonprofit organizations across the US by offering $25,000 grants for neighborhood projects that specifically benefit either education, safety or community development. This year, the insurance brand is inviting people to apply for that grant by sharing a story about why their chosen organization is so deserving of the reward. This contest was built by Heyo’s talented full-service development team and features a custom submission countdown clock, photo upload and fully responsive design.

Pringles “Battle of the Cans” Video Contest 

Pringles is all about school spirit! And this Fall, they’re inviting marching bands from across the country to submit a video featuring a killer drumline solo (using Pringles cans of course!) for a chance to win one of 16 $1,000 high school band booster donations.  Also built by Heyo’s full-service development team, this contest features Instagram, Twitter & Direct Upload options, a head-to-head voting gallery and fully responsive design.

The Co-Operators “Name Our Neighbours” Quiz Campaign

Canadian insurance company The Co-Operators is about to release a new TV commercial, and with the help of Heyo’s Quiz Application, they’re allowing their customers to participate in the process of naming all the starring characters! This is a great example of how to bring your audience into the larger conversation for your brand, and make them feel like they are part of the overall brand experience. Built by Heyo’s full-service development team, this campaign features technology that requires all users to watch all of the video before proceeding (in order to maximize brand engagement), custom registration flow and fully responsive design.

Want to learn more about our products and services, or brainstorm with a member of our team on your next promotion? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.