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Facebook Advertising … Ten things everyone should know about Facebook advertising
1 Facebook is Huge … Let’s face it Facebook is huge. According to the latest financial returns for the first quarter of 2018, Facebook is now claiming 1.4 billion daily average users (DAUs) and 2.2 billion monthly average users. (MAUs) Advertising revenues in the first quarter were $12 billion dollars. For the latest twelve month period, revenues were almost $45 billion dollars. Facebook is the dominant on line advertising platform. 2 Facebook is not just about B2C … We used to think of Facebook as predominantly an advertising tool for the B2C market. No longer is this the case. More business pages and more business owners identified (and profiled) as Facebook users means that Facebook is now an important B2B advertising option. 3 Facebook Advertising is easy to set up … Setting up an ad campaign with Facebook is easy. Using the FB Ad manager or Hootsuite’s AdExpresso it is relatively straightforward to set up a campaign. Facebook is designed to make spending your ad money so easy and it is. 4 The Rules of FB ads, are pretty straightforward … The four guiding principles of Facebook advertising are straight forward … Visual … Attention The ads must offer a highly engaging photo, copy light with no more than a 20% word density. Facebook is looking for an attractive content flow across the page. Ad visuals with too many words across the shot will be rejected. Valuable … Interest The ad promise should be valuable to the target audience, identifying the “What’s in it for me” proposition and ensure it is delivered. Relevant … Desire The ads must be relevant to the audience. The key is the product offer and the audience definition using the detailed and specific FB features on socio-demographics, location and interest groups. Clear Call to Action … Action The ads must offer a clear call to action. Specific and well defined. Using a “Button” option to boost traffic to a page, web site or event. 5 Marketing Principles Apply … FB may offer a new platform but the old rules of advertising still apply. The ads should be part of an integrated marketing campaign. Make sure your FB page or company page is well designed and up to date as part of that campaign. Make sure you know who you are trying to reach. What is your specific audience? Where are they located geographically? Can you define by location, age, family relationships, hobbies, interests and type of business. FB makes it so easy to set up a specific audience campaign. You can also import an email data base for example to create a mirrored or look a like audience as part of the campaign development. What is it you are trying to achieve …? Make sure you know, what it is you are trying to achieve. Is it traffic to a business page, a Facebook page, a web site page, an app or an event? Do you simply want to develop brand or product awareness as part of a wider influence campaign? What is the action outcome you seek to achieve …? What is the action outcome you would seek to secure from the campaign? Is it likes, engagement, ticket sales or revenue. FB is great to identify cost of acquisition and ROI the return on investment for any goal set. Make sure you know what it is you are trying to achieve and measure the performance (Your KPIS and ROIs.) 6 Budget …? Identify how much you are prepared to spend and over what period. FB will give guidelines on the size of audience defined and the coverage that may be achieved over the campaign period. 7 How much should you spend. …? We measure our campaigns in terms of coverage and frequency. Don’t try to hit too large an audience with your campaign plans, unless you have huge budgets. Working with a segmented audience of say 100,000 is better that targeting the near 40 million FB users in the UK with your first campaign. Quantify the audience and work out what kind of performance you would like to achieve. 8 Measure your campaign impact! This bit is a little geeky but is the most important of all … Track the performance of Reach, Impressions and Frequency identified in the FaceBook campaign overview. Understand the mechanics of the process. Reach divided by audience size is a measure of the campaign coverage of your target audience. Impressions is a measure of the OTS or Opportunities To See the “reached audience” have had to see the ad.. Impressions divided by reach is the measure of frequency. ie the number of times the “reached audience” have seen the ad. Measure the campaign impact. Frequency times coverage is a measure of the campaign impact achieved during the campaign. Using a carefully segmented audience, we are able to achieve an 80% coverage with a 5 times OTS. This gives us a campaign impact of 400 Gross Rating Points. That is a bog campaign weight over a four week period. How do we do that? 9 Want to know more …? Join us at the Big Social Media Conference on the 6th July. Our experts are on hand to ensure you get the most out of your Facebook Advertising Campaigns. 10 There’s always more to learn … JKA
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Dear Mike,
As promised here is the first letter in the series on how to use social media to give your profile and business a boost - the ten things you must do now to establish your social media profile ... 1. Be famous for thirty seconds. Establish what you want to be known for. What is it that makes YOU unique? Figure out your thirty-second elevator pitch and make sure it's no more than 50-100 words! Once done, modify and use this across all your social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). And don’t forget your website and email footer. A simple message stated with intense frequency is the key to communication. 2. Create a keyword strategy. Identify three keywords or phrases that encapsulate your thirty-second pitch. Consider what you do, and the phrases people are likely to use when searching for your products/services/brand. Make sure these appear across all your social media profiles and promotional channels. Pay particular attention to your LinkedIn profile, making sure your keywords frequently appear in the summary and profile section. 3. Get yourself a good photograph. If you're creating a social media profile a good profile shot is essential. Make sure the lighting is right. A selfie in a dark room just won't cut it! If necessary get one done professionally on a day you feel good! To keep consistency of branding, ensure the same photo appears (in some form) on all of your social media platforms. 4. Establish a mailing list strategy. Your contact list is one of your main social media assets. Start as you mean to go on and select a mailing list product such as Dotmailer or MailChimp to help you manage and maximise this. Build your list from you contact files, LinkedIn and more. It's also worth considering the aesthetics of any mailers as well as the content. Make sure this echoes your social media profiles. 5. Become a blogger. A cost-effective marketing and communications tool blogs give you a voice. And, when used in conjunction with other marketing channels that voice can be heard. Combine the power of blogging, social and email to tell people what you are up to and what your new business is all about. However, make sure to be consistent with the frequency and issue of these blogs. Would monthly, bi-monthly or weekly work best for you? As a rule, people want to know what you are up to so weekly works well. But don’t overdo it. Become an email inbox habit. Later I’ll send you a letter with some top tips for bloggers. You write well, in reports, prose and poetry - out those skills to good use. 6. Build your content authority. You have so much to offer, now is the time to get writing and share this with your audience. However, if you are going to be deploying content to help boost sales, it's vital to add a little strategy to the process. Figure out what you want to produce (blog posts, e-books articles) and what you want this to do for your business. Don't have time to create content yourself? Brief someone to write it for you! Or take down your ideas and translate into a blog. 7. One asset, many products, many platforms. As well as sharing your content across different platforms, use your assets in as many ways as you can. A blog post can be used to create tweets, a LinkedIn post or a Facebook update. An email can form the basis of a Slideshare presentation or an ebook. One asset can become many products distributed over many platforms. 8. Leave your mark. Make sure your fingerprints, footprints and photographs are widely distributed across all your social media platforms. You want to make it easy for people (and Google!) to find you. A simple message, shared with intense frequency using the same graphics across many platforms aids search. 9. Accept we are all copywriters now. Make sure you know how to write (or have someone who can help you to write): · Headlines that hook · Paragraphs the punch · Content that kills 10. Understand the importance of beacons, cascades and R(0)s. These, along with #hashtags, hooks, lists lures and landing pages (not to mention the development of a comprehensive LinkedIn and Twitter strategy) will help develop your social media following. More on this in the next letter! For now, concentrate on the basics. Get it up, and then get it right. The great thing about social media is that it doesn’t have to be perfect at the start. You can polish as you go! John Thinking of improving or developing your “news stories. The rules are changing, check out the Ten guidelines for handling news updates in the age of social media ...
1 The Lines are Blurred The lines are blurred between traditional media, media bloggers and own “news / information channels” and social media channels. 2 News Release Not Press Release We need to develop the format of information or news stories, not as a “Press release” but a “News Release” or “News Update”. 3 Guarantee Frequency Develop frequency, frequency leads to familiarity, familiarity leads to trust – just like a friend dropping in with helpful news and updates, the news updates arrive with essential news in a regular basis. 4 Ensure Consistency Ensure the look of the news update is consistent, with each release. Friends should be recognisable and offer the same greeting each time. 5 Target the target Write for the target “audience”, including members, team members and stakeholders not just key media. 6 Include Keywords Ensure “Keywords” are in the post, consistent with the overall strategy. You do have a “Keyword” strategy? 7 Link to Links Embed links to web site(s) and other key assets and information or data. Make it easy to find more information as necessary. 8 Content is king Content is king, it develops, authority, thought leadership and platform Link to more content detail, where appropriate from a shorter “teaser” release, when appropriate. 9 Social Media Add Social media tags, including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest. Use “forward” & “share” options, make it easy to spread the good word. 10 Use Social Media Use Social Media to cross promote, especially Twitter, the chatter key line. Use Buffer for example to multiply and sequence the update. This is from the "Letters to a Friend on Social Media Series" Check out the web site Dimensions of Strategy for more information, sign up for updates As promised here is the first letter in the series on how to use social media to give your profile and business a boost - the ten things you must do now to establish your social media profile ...
1. Be famous for thirty seconds. Establish what you want to be known for. What is it that makes YOU unique? Figure out your thirty-second elevator pitch and make sure it's no more than 50-100 words! Once done, modify and use this across all your social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). And don’t forget your website and email footer. A simple message stated with intense frequency is the key to communication. 2. Create a keyword strategy. Identify three keywords or phrases that encapsulate your thirty-second pitch. Consider what you do, and the phrases people are likely to use when searching for your products/services/brand. Make sure these appear across all your social media profiles and promotional channels. Pay particular attention to your LinkedIn profile, making sure your keywords frequently appear in the summary and profile section. 3. Get yourself a good photograph. If you're creating a social media profile a good profile shot is essential. Make sure the lighting is right. A selfie in a dark room just won't cut it! If necessary get one done professionally on a day you feel good! To keep consistency of branding, ensure the same photo appears (in some form) on all of your social media platforms. 4. Establish a mailing list strategy. Your contact list is one of your main social media assets. Start as you mean to go on and select a mailing list product such as Dotmailer or MailChimp to help you manage and maximise this. Build your list from you contact files, LinkedIn and more. It's also worth considering the aesthetics of any mailers as well as the content. Make sure this echoes your social media profiles. 5. Become a blogger. A cost-effective marketing and communications tool blogs give you a voice. And, when used in conjunction with other marketing channels that voice can be heard. Combine the power of blogging, social and email to tell people what you are up to and what your new business is all about. However, make sure to be consistent with the frequency and issue of these blogs. Would monthly, bi-monthly or weekly work best for you? As a rule, people want to know what you are up to so weekly works well. But don’t overdo it. Become an email inbox habit. Later I’ll send you a letter with some top tips for bloggers. You write well, in reports, prose and poetry - out those skills to good use. 6. Build your content authority. You have so much to offer, now is the time to get writing and share this with your audience. However, if you are going to be deploying content to help boost sales, it's vital to add a little strategy to the process. Figure out what you want to produce (blog posts, e-books articles) and what you want this to do for your business. Don't have time to create content yourself? Brief someone to write it for you! Or take down your ideas and translate into a blog. 7. One asset, nay products, many platforms. As well as sharing your content across different platforms, use your assets in as many ways as you can. A blog post can be used to create tweets, a LinkedIn post or a Facebook update. An email can form the basis of a Slideshare presentation or an ebook. One asset can become many products distributed over many platforms. 8. Leave your mark. Make sure your fingerprints, footprints and photographs are widely distributed across all your social media platforms. You want to make it easy for people (and Google!) to find you. A simple message, shared with intense frequency using the same graphics across many platforms aids search. 9. Accept we are all copywriters now. Make sure you know how to write (or have someone who can help you to write): · Headlines that hook · Paragraphs the punch · Content that kills 10. Understand the importance of beacons, cascades and R(0)s. These, along with #hashtags, hooks, lists lures and landing pages (not to mention the development of a comprehensive LinkedIn and Twitter strategy) will help develop your social media following. More on this in the next letter! For now, concentrate on the basics. Get it up, and then get it right. The great thing about social media is that it doesn’t have to be perfect at the start. You can polish as you go! John Hi Mike,
A recent study by marketing consultancy firm Millward Brown has found that Pinterest influences purchasing decisions and helps users to find things they want to buy. According to the report (which was co-sponsored by Pinterest):• 52% of respondents agree that Pinterest helps them find items they want to buy • Just under half of respondents believe Pinterest recommends relevant product • 32% of respondents have purchased an item in a store after viewing Pinterest content. Launched in 2010, Pinterest hit the headlines following an early period of explosive growth. Despite initial popularity, many ‘serious’ marketers snubbed the digital scrapbook, believing it to be the province of fashionistas, blushing brides and craft enthusiasts. Today, with over 47 million people now using Pinterest, and its active user base expected to grow even further, such marketers dismiss the power of the pin at their peril. According to eMarketer, Pinterest’s US user base will reach 47.1 million in 2015, up 11.4% year over year. Why Pinterest? There is no denying that the sales and marketing potential of the image sharing social network is huge. A recent GlobalWebIndex report found that Pinterest was the fastest growing social network of 2014, with active users up by 97%. But its potential isn’t just down to its user numbers. With the sole purpose of Pinterest to find and pin things that you like, its focus on aspirational products makes it an ideal platform for brands to connect with their target audience(s). So, while it may not be on a par with the social media big boys when it comes to user numbers, its ability to appeal to its user base means that its ROI Return on Investment potential could be unbeatable. Indeed, when it comes to social media traffic referrals, Pinterest already sends a significant number of potential customers to e-commerce websites. Coming second only to Facebook. Pinterest has faced criticism from some quarters for the fact its user base remains predominantly female. These women are shoppers. With stats showing women make or influence 85% of all consumer purchasing decisions, Pinterest isn’t keen to rest on its laurels. Developers at the company are working hard to increase appeal to male users. Efforts are paying off. The site has doubled the amount of new male users over the past year. One-third of registrations are now made by men. Committed to making it even easier for users to find and share content, a number of new and forthcoming developments will increase the appeal of Pinterest. The introduction of the new ‘Pin it’ button led to an initial 3% increase in re pins simply by reducing the amount of clicks needed to share content. Likewise, Pinterest has made no secret of its plans to attract more advertisers to its platform as it refines its ad-targeting tools. With developments such as animated pins, plans to improve the way it harvests user data, Pinterest is set to provide a greater insight into what users want to buy. The reality is that Pinterest’s reach and influence is growing. But a significant percentage of businesses have yet to realise this. What this means, is that brands that take on the challenge of using Pinterest to create highly visible, sharable content could give themselves an early advantage over the competition. If you’d like to find out more about how your business can benefit from the power of the pin, join over 1000 fellow marketers and business owners to discover the latest in Pinterest and social media marketing from the world’s top experts. Beth Hayden will be featuring at The Big Social Media Conference in July. I hope this helps. Mike to explain more about Pinterest. I am not sure this is the right option for you at present but this is some useful background. I will be in touch next week with another letter in the series ... Using Social Media to boost your profile and your business ... Warmest Regards, John Letters to a friend on Social Media, Dimensions of Strategy from John Ashcroft and Company, Economics, Strategy and Social Media, experience worth sharing. Hi Mike,
The CRIMSON Strategy - Content, Relationship, InBound Marketing Strategy Online Our thinking on Crimson clouds was shaped by the work undertaken as we developed the highly sophisticated marketing model for the pro.manchester B23 Business Development Group. CRIMSON relates to Content Strategy, Relationship Marketing, Inbound Marketing Strategy ON line. An essential step forward in the Integrating Social Media Agenda for any marketing plan, profile or business. Content - is important to develop platform and authority, grabbing the high ground of thought process in a specific arena. The use of e-books, white books and article marketing is essential to develop the authoritative content platform. Our mantra is CAP content, authority, platform. Relationship marketing - is about building a relationship before transaction. Understanding concepts such as cost of acquisition, life time values and life cycle planning both in terms of the order - contract process and / or developing a life time relationship. Inbound Marketing - is using email strategies to secure leads and contacts into the business (inbound) as opposed to the traditional "outbound" "push" forms of advertising and communication. Inbound marketing secures leads using e-mail strategies, lures, landing pages, calls to Action and Sign up and permission forms. We use a variety of mailing houses including Mail Chimp, Dotmailer, Aweber and more. For landing pages we work primarily with Instapages and Leadpages to develop high rates of conversion, with easy to use A/B split test options. Social Media - Our social media platforms include LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest as well as video channels such as YouTube and Vimeo. We also use photo grab sites like Flickr and Snapchat. Despite the plethora of social media platforms, the home web site is key, as is the home web site blogging page. We use Twitter to drive traffic to the landing pages and web sites. Twitter is a means to an end, not just an end platform. We can use LinkedIn, not just to build authority and platform but to drive traffic to a destination site as part of a specific canvass. On our social media site, the professor and his team, have discussed, the importance of beacons, cascades and R(0)s to accelerate and multiply the propagation of key messages and networks. We have also written on fingerprints, footprints and photographs, the importance of laying a trail across the web, to facilitate, "bot spotting", improving SEO discovery for keywords, key names and brands. Our asset strategy mantra is one asset, many products, many platforms assisting the multiplier process. For more information check out our Social Media Experts site and the Dimensions of Strategy Site of Course! I hope this helps. Mike, We have been developing our strategy for some time now. The CRIMSON strategy, one of the many important ways to improve the performance of your social media messaging. I will be in touch next week with another letter in the series ... Using Social Media to boost your profile and your business ... Warmest Regards, John Letters to a friend on Social Media, Dimensions of Strategy from John Ashcroft and Company, Economics, Strategy and Social Media, experience worth sharing. Beacons, Cascades and R(0)s ... how to improve the performance of your social media messaging ...4/30/2015 Beacons, Cascades and R(0)s how to improve the performance on your social media messaging
Beacons … In 1803 the threat to the security came from Napoleon. In order to mobilise defence forces in the event of an invasion from France, a system of communication beacons was established. In the event of an invasion, men guarding each beacon, keeping watch with a telescope, would light their own beacon as soon as the adjacent beacon fired up. It is one of the first examples of message relay system. Efficient but slow, with social media we can move a whole lot faster, especially when it’s raining! The principal remains the same but speeds have increased a lot! Cascades … A Cascade Communication Process, ensures decisions and messages of great significance are communicated to as many people as possible, at every level, in a given population using the chain of command. Cascade communication, a top down process, drives clarity and alignment. In Coloroll as we developed the business, our workforce grew from 500 to over 10,000 in ten years. We used “Team Briefing” to ensure the messages were relayed throughout the workforce. It was and is a great way to communicate and spread messages quickly. With social media we can move a whole lot faster but the principal remains the same. R(0)s … In Social media we are able to capitalize on the inherent speed of process to relay messages quickly. We can spread the message using Beacon and Cascade techniques. We can also accelerate the rate of propagation by improving the R(0) capacity of the message. So what do we mean by R(0)s? In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number is denoted as R(0) say “r nought”. The R(0) of an infection can be thought of as the number of cases one case generates, on average, over the course of its infectious period. This metric helps determine the speed at which an infectious disease can spread through a population. Generally, the larger the value of R(0) …R(1) … R(2) … R(n), the harder it is to control the epidemic and the more quickly the disease or virus will spread. So with social media, the larger the R(0) viral value of the message, the greater the potential for faster and more widespread communication. Beacons? Cascades? R(0)s? understanding the concepts will take your Social Media strategy to the next level. Here are some of the ways you can develop the Beacons, Cascades and R(0) concept to enhance your Twitter communication strategy. 1 Create your own beacons … Identify people who will RT for you and further on your tweets without prompting. Within pro-manchester we now have almost 200,000 followers across our major product groups. Our managers are our beacons. 2 Establish Cascades … Develop a chain of people who forward your tweet on to other people automatically. In pro-manchester, managers and members form part of our cascade network. 3 Enhance the R(0) value … Create content with interest to others. Create content with great viral value. It’s like word of mouth marketing with speed enhancement. 4 Use Hashtags, Handles and Hooks … Hook up to the Twitterers with a large number of followers. Include their handles in your message or RT where appropriate. They will then spread the message to their highly engaged followers. Include hashtags to maintain conversations and themes. Hashtags, Handles and Hooks! 5 Keep your Tweets short … 140 characters is not a lot to play with and asking for increased brevity may be a challenge! By leaving approx. 15 – 20 characters spare, you are allowing potential Beacons and Cascades to include a comment in a Re Tweet. It’s easy to click the RT button. People still like to comment on the message they are passing on. Space allows them to do this. 6 Mention the right people … Including key people in your tweets will help the message picked. For example, if you are at an event, use the Twitter handle of other attendees and presenters. Choose the right people. Those with an active Twitter presence and a large following, will allow you to cascade your message amongst their following. Communication is a two way process. Make sure you reciprocate. RT their tweets and interact with them on a continuous basis, not just when you need help cascading. 7 Don’t ask for the RT … Asking for a RT looks desperate. If your content is good, people will RT. If your content is relevant, people will RT. Telling someone ‘You should RT this because it is interesting to you’ will have the opposite effect. Let your readers decide for themselves if it is interesting – and do your best to make sure your content is of interest! 8 Be prepared … Prepare a list of people who will be your Beacon, help you Cascade or accelerate the R(0). Take this list with you to events, networking functions, meetings – you can then tweet quickly and easily, propagating breaking news as it happens – not five minutes later when you have finally managed to trawl Google and find the right person’s Twitter handle. Use the event # as well. You will certainly be RT'd. 9 RT the stars … Identify the Twitter stars and thought leaders in your areas of interest. Identify, the ones with the larger following. RT some their recent work. Include them in a Tweet if this is of particular interest to them. 10 Create Conversations … Create conversations. You want people to spread your messages to create debate, conversations and engagement. This will only happen if you invite people to join you. We talk of the 3Es - engage, equip empower. Engage your followers in the conversation, equip them with the key information to engage in the debate, empower them lots of different ways to talk and share ideas. So with all your social media messaging, stop and think! Am I considering all the Beacons and Cascades available to me. How can I enhance the R(0) value of my message. Just how good is my content, how viral could it be! I hope this helps. Mike, We have been developing our strategy for some time now. Beacons, Cascades and R(0)s ten ways to improve the performance of your social media messaging. I will be in touch next week with another letter in the series ... Using Social Media to boost your profile and your business ... Warmest Regards, John Letters to a friend on Social Media, Dimensions of Strategy from John Ashcroft and Company, Economics, Strategy and Social Media, experience worth sharing. Letters to a friend on social media - Much More Multi Media - Why you must include lots of video in your content marketing strategy. We call it our 4Ms strategy - Much More Multi Media.
Hi Mike, Since YouTube launched in 2005, video has fast become the star of the content marketing world. Video is changing the way audiences engage with brands. Apps such as Vine, Periscope and Meerkat enable anyone to create proprietary videos on a budget. Even small businesses can get in on the act. It’s a trend that’s set to continue. Developers and platforms are finding more and more ways to help brands put video at the heart of their content marketing. Video will account for almost 70% of all consumer web traffic by 2017. If you haven't yet bought into the potential of multi-media, now’s the time to start. Here are five reasons why you should be using video … 1 The reach is enormous … YouTube has more than 1 billion users, with the number of hours people watch on YouTube each month up 50% year on year. In fact, after Google and Facebook, YouTube reaches more people than any other site. With mobile usage set to surpass desktop for the first time this year, and mobile revenue on YouTube up over 100%, marketers are seizing the opportunity to connect with their audiences. We like Youtube but also host with Vimeo. Lot’s of choice to create awareness for your brand… 2 It’s so sharable … Consumers are 39% more likely to share content if it’s delivered via video. Easy to digest and instantly engaging. If you want to go viral, go video. Shareability is,one of the key success drivers in any content marketing campaign, but your video is unlikely to become contagious through sheer good luck. Creating great videos requires a sound strategy. Determine your audience and content strategy. What is it, that is most likely to trigger a response and the desire to share. People have a variety of reasons for sharing content with their online networks, and understanding these motivations is key to achieving the largest possible audience for your campaign. 3 It helps you and your brand to connect … With emotion playing a huge role in how B2C and B2B buyers operate, today's marketers need to appeal to the head and the heart. Perhaps more than any other marketing channel, video helps us to elicit an emotional response. The right kind of music track makes all the difference. For our music tracks, we like Music Bakery and Audio Jungle. Picking the right track, need not be expensive! The more your content inspires and engages, the more likely you audience will be to take meaningful action. Just don’t forget to add a strategic call to action to help them along. 4 You don’t need a big brand budget … According to our latest research, marketers are set to boost global online video spend by 22% this year. However, while brands are increasingly willing to spend more on video (particularly if targeting millennials), video marketing no longer requires a big brand budget. Previously out of the reach of most small businesses, reduced production costs and a range of easily accessible video editing apps, allows brands of all sizes to create business relevant videos. Perhaps just as compelling, savvy brands can also turn to their customers to create content for them. Consider Snapchat’s ‘Our Story’ for example. Used during major public events, “Our Story” splices curated, public images and videos with branded sponsorship to leverage the power of crowd-sourced content. However, the use of customer-generated content doesn’t have to be the province of big advertisers, and the general premise can be adopted by even the smallest of brands. Just look at the success of Go Pro. A brand built on the contributions of clients. That’s great viral marketing. 5 It’s is here to stay … Over the last year, almost every major social network has increased the prominence of visual content. With many going head-to-head when it comes to securing dominance in the video marketing space, almost all are showing preferential treatment to content hosted directly on their respective platforms. Video marketing is evolving. Consider Twitter’s purchase of live streaming app Periscope for example. Allowing people to broadcast live video from their smartphones, Periscope (and its competitor Meerkat) have been dominating conversation about the future of video. With live-steaming offering businesses the potential to build rapport and engage customers on an unprecedented scale, Periscope’s phenomenal marketing, promotional and PR potential is only starting to become apparent. Finally Software. What software should you use? We use Apple Final Cut for our major edits. A number of simple set ups are also available. We like Vine, Snapchat, Hykoo and two great Adobe products, Adobe Slate and Adobe Voice. I hope this helps, I will be in touch next week with another letter in the Series ... Using Social Media to boost your profile and your business, Warmest Regards, John Letters to a friend on social media - fingerprints, footprints and photographs
Laying a trail across the net ... Dear Mike, To develop a social media profile, you need to lay a drag trail across the Internet. You need to leave as many imprints as you can, in many different places and on many different platforms. You have to make it easy for the search bots to find you. Walking a country trail, the mantra is - take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints. Developing a social media profile - We need to leave as many fingerprints, footprints, photographs, videos, blog posts and much more, in as many places as we can across the net! How do we do that? Here are a six key guidelines we use in our business to develop a fingerprint strategy. 1 Platforms - decide on the platforms to be used as part of the strategy, be it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr, Prezi or Slideshare or some of the short video options like Meerkat and Periscope. B2B may use Linkedin and Twitter predominantly. B2C may find Facebook, Google+ and Twitter more productive. In the past we have focused on LinkedIn and Twitter and now having some great results with Facebook Pages and Facebook Advertising in addition. Make your choice, limited to begin with ... 2 Keywords - determine your keyword strategy. Don't use too many. I use three. Identify the key words or phrases you wish to associate with your "product" or "brand". Ensure the keyword rhythm and phrasing is identical on each platform. A fingerprint is unique to the individual. So too, should be the key word strategy. Unique but appearing in many different places, frequently. A simple message stated with intense frequency, the key to communication ... 3 "Product" or "Brand" Think of your self and your business as a product or brand. What is the "Image" you wish to present in your CAP Strategy. You have no choice - you will have an image, whether you want one or not. You do have a choice as to what that image will be ... handled properly. 4 Content - use many different formats to generate and propagate content. Blog posts, articles, e books, white books, photos, and videos. The same content can be reworked into a supporting platform. For example, use the blog post to generate a slide presentation, then publish on slideshare. Connect Slideshare to your LinkedIn profile. Use the slideshare presentation to generate an ebook. Use the ebook to develop a “lure” for your landing pages and email list strategy. Rework the idea for content into many different formats. A TEAM effort, saving Time Energy And Money. One product, many assets many platforms. 5 Propagate - propagate the content using our unique Beacons, Cascades and R(0) strategy. Use Twitter to spread the message across the net using hashtags and handles to assist the propagation process. If we can increase the R(0) from zero to R(5), the messages are relayed at a faster rate. Word of mouth has always been a powerful communication option. World of e, is faster and more expansive. We will speak more on beacons, cascades and R(O)s in a later letter. 6 What's your MO, develop a method, mode of code of practice in laying the trail across the net. Be consistent, make it easy for the search bots to get on the trail. Establish a checklist for posting new content, use it and stick with it, every time you post on your blog. Laying a trail across the Internet, we need to leave as many imprints as we can to make it easy for the search bots to find the trail. Sometimes we easily forget the steps we have taken in the past. You do not want to end up heading in the wrong direction on your social media trail Neither do the search engines. Develop a routine and a system ... and stick with it. I hope this helps. Fingerprints, Footprints and Photographs - laying a trail across the internet. I will be in touch next week with another letter in the series ... Using Social Media to boost your profile and you business ... Warmest Regards, John Dimensions of Strategy, from John Ashcroft and Company, Economics, Strategy and Social Media - experience worth sharing! Dear Mike,
As promised here is the first letter in the series on how to use social media to give your profile and business a boost - the ten things you must do now to establish your social media profile ... 1. Be famous for thirty seconds. Establish what you want to be known for. What is it that makes YOU unique? Figure out your thirty-second elevator pitch and make sure it's no more than 50-100 words! Once done, modify and use this across all your social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.). And don’t forget your website and email footer. A simple message stated with intense frequency is the key to communication. 2. Create a keyword strategy. Identify three keywords or phrases that encapsulate your thirty-second pitch. Consider what you do, and the phrases people are likely to use when searching for your products/services/brand. Make sure these appear across all your social media profiles and promotional channels. Pay particular attention to your LinkedIn profile, making sure your keywords frequently appear in the summary and profile section. 3. Get yourself a good photograph. If you're creating a social media profile a good profile shot is essential. Make sure the lighting is right. A selfie in a dark room just won't cut it! If necessary get one done professionally on a day you feel good! To keep consistency of branding, ensure the same photo appears (in some form) on all of your social media platforms. 4. Establish a mailing list strategy. Your contact list is one of your main social media assets. Start as you mean to go on and select a mailing list product such as Dotmailer or MailChimp to help you manage and maximise this. Build your list from you contact files, LinkedIn and more. It's also worth considering the aesthetics of any mailers as well as the content. Make sure this echoes your social media profiles. 5. Become a blogger. A cost-effective marketing and communications tool blogs give you a voice. And, when used in conjunction with other marketing channels that voice can be heard. Combine the power of blogging, social and email to tell people what you are up to and what your new business is all about. However, make sure to be consistent with the frequency and issue of these blogs. Would monthly, bi-monthly or weekly work best for you? As a rule, people want to know what you are up to so weekly works well. But don’t overdo it. Become an email inbox habit. Later I’ll send you a letter with some top tips for bloggers. You write well, in reports, prose and poetry - out those skills to good use. 6. Build your content authority. You have so much to offer, now is the time to get writing and share this with your audience. However, if you are going to be deploying content to help boost sales, it's vital to add a little strategy to the process. Figure out what you want to produce (blog posts, e-books articles) and what you want this to do for your business. Don't have time to create content yourself? Brief someone to write it for you! Or take down your ideas and translate into a blog. 7. One asset, nay products, many platforms. As well as sharing your content across different platforms, use your assets in as many ways as you can. A blog post can be used to create tweets, a LinkedIn post or a Facebook update. An email can form the basis of a Slideshare presentation or an ebook. One asset can become many products distributed over many platforms. 8. Leave your mark. Make sure your fingerprints, footprints and photographs are widely distributed across all your social media platforms. You want to make it easy for people (and Google!) to find you. A simple message, shared with intense frequency using the same graphics across many platforms aids search. 9. Accept we are all copywriters now. Make sure you know how to write (or have someone who can help you to write): · Headlines that hook · Paragraphs the punch · Content that kills 10. Understand the importance of beacons, cascades and R(0)s. These, along with #hashtags, hooks, lists lures and landing pages (not to mention the development of a comprehensive LinkedIn and Twitter strategy) will help develop your social media following. More on this in the next letter! For now, concentrate on the basics. Get it up, and then get it right. The great thing about social media is that it doesn’t have to be perfect at the start. You can polish as you go! John |
John Ashcroft
A
friend of mine recently set up his own business. He asked for some tips on
using Twitter. Here’s the letter
(well an email actually). Archives
May 2018
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