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How To Start A Social Media Strategy For Your Small Business

Barrie 26/09/2021

In this article, we’ll be discussing how to ensure your business starts off on the right foot in terms of social media marketing. In the early days of a startup, it can be tempting to focus almost entirely on product development — and while that is certainly important, running a business also requires some degree of marketing and PR. From building out a content calendar and crafting your first few posts to creating a social media strategy and measuring your results, there’s a lot to consider when getting started.

1. How to start a social media marketing strategy

It’s not enough to just have a social media profile if you want to start a social media marketing strategy. You need to have a plan, you need to have a strategy. What are you trying to achieve? What are the objectives of your social media marketing strategy? What are the goals? What are the tasks?

Take a look at the following three spreadsheets*.
*Sample below: Business development | Business strategy
Business development
Ranking objectives: To rank on Google.com, Yahoo! and MSN in Google (US), Yahoo! and MSN in the US, and Baidu in China.
Target keywords: To link to the business’s online presence.
Ranking position: To rank for keywords in each of the business’s target countries with a probability that they will be linked to based on rankings.
Internal link velocity: To develop links per month and build links on a trial basis.
Direct link velocity: How many web pages use one external link to the business’s website. This will help to build “short-term” links with a higher probability.
Outbound link velocity: How many external web pages use one link with a linking domain to target market. This will help build “long-term” links with a higher probability.
External link acquisition cost: To acquire links.
Link velocity: How often the business acquires links.
Inbound link acquisition cost: To acquire links.
Conversion objectives: To convert prospects into customers within one year.
Target keywords: To convert prospects into cash-buyers within one year.
Ranking position: To rank for all keywords used by prospect specifically to sell online to specific prospect.
Internal link velocity: To influence the top organic links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-authority, authoritative linking domains.
Direct link velocity: How often the high-quality links are acquired.
Outbound link velocity: To influence the top outbound links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-quality, authoritative linking domains.
External link velocity: To influence the top external links, prioritize niche-relevant, high-quality, authoritative linking domains.
Direct link to conversion button: To encourage users to convert directly from web pages with high-rents and high-revenue.

2. Choose the right social networks for your business

There are a lot of social networks out there but not all of them are right for your business. If you’re a small business, you probably don’t need to be on every single network, but you do need to be on at least one. Your choice of social networks depends on your target audience and business.If your niche isn’t huge, don’t worry about having the most popular or the most marketing reach. MORE often than not, users of a given platform will spend more time on a given platform than another. The world is ruled by the Internet duopoly — but there are also lots of great options that cater to other businesses. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to identify which platforms fit your niche best.

Do Something Great

Before jumping into the social media platforms you want to use, it’s good to look at what kinds of businesses are trying to thrive on social media. Social media by nature is inherently niche-specific, so niche businesses are naturally going to have a hard time competing in a market dominated by giants. However, there are other great reasons to consider social media for your business besides followers and engagement — brand building, brand awareness, and engagement are fundamentally aligned with your overall goal of building brand loyalty and trust. When building out your social media strategy, keep this in mind.

Before you choose a social media platform, you should know a bit about your competitor’s offerings. You don’t want to be relying on one social media platform to serve your business — especially a play like Instagram that is dominated by one platform owner. This type of platform has been high-risk financially except for TikTok, and now Instagram is valuing them at $19 billion, way out of proportion to the approx. 800 million active monthly users. Another major risk is giving your customers a bad impression of your brand if you’re missing out on dominating the platform — the platform owner might take all of the praise and glory, leaving you with a large chunk of users but a much smaller brand.

3. Build your content calendar

It’s the most important thing when it comes to building an audience. Why? Because if you can help people know when to expect new content from you, then they’ll start to build it into their routine and expect new content from you on certain days or at certain times.There are a variety of ways you can do this, but the best way to start off your social media efforts is to figure out your “social stage of business”. This is a term I coined back in 2017 from the concept that a great startup is built on the foundation of a great user experience, and while your product is arguably the most important thing to build, your social media marketing is just as important.

Do your researchIf you want to learn the foundations of developing a great social media strategy and measuring its efficacy, I highly recommend reading The Starting Points for Social Media by Adam Audette. This book details five social media stages, and as you read, you’ll come across many real life examples of typical businesses that have started off in one stage before moving to the next. These instances will also showcase how companies have now transitioned to platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram in order to target the “next stage.”

Understand that content and social media aren’t just a something for loftier goals. If you want to have a successful social media marketing campaign, your content needs to be more relevant to what your primary audience is looking for. According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) 2017 count, the average person checks Twitter and Facebook a few times a day. If you want to compete for that attention, you need to be able to deliver the content your audience is looking for.
Read ahead to ensure you’ve got a detailed understanding of the first four stages of a social media marketing campaign.
National vs. local vs.

4. Craft your first few posts

Once you’ve got your blog up and running, you’ll need to start writing your first few posts. It’s important to get your first few posts right, and to write and edit and re-edit until you’re happy with the result.And “first few posts” can be a huge a la carte bill that includes the following:
Brand “Name” + Keyword + Initial Post Idea
Keyword Research Should Be Decisive (i.e., determine and target your brand goals)
In the early stages of your startup, all of that building your foundation will take place online. As you get into the “main event” — which is really just a few months of blogging and social media efforts aimed at building something really impressive — you’ll want to focus on these items to help you ensure you’re not kicking yourself for not having written a great blog post at the end of the summer.

In this article, I’ll explain six ways you can ensure your blog stays on-topic so that it achieves its maximum potential:. Build a Content Calendar
Be inspired and set up a calendar of upcoming posts from your business. Add dates, deadlines, and mark posts as read or unread. If you know you’re going to be traveling a lot and / or out of town for a particular week, schedule a post on each location/theme you’ll be visiting.
Monthly columns are also a great way to keep readers motivated and focused. A column of recent posts can serve as a reminder of times to be active on your blog and also to see what posts have been most popular so far.
To get started, follow Wistia on social media, which will allow you to see recently shared posts. You’ll also want to check out Memeorandum, which will allow you to see any shared posts within the last 72 hours.
If appropriate, you may also want to create social media bulletins for new posts, providing useful links for those new posts.

5. Create a social media strategy and measurement plan

Create a social media strategy and measurement plan. Social media is a great way to interact with your customers and boost sales, but there are so many social media platforms that it can be hard to know where to start.Here are a few solutions that will get you started.

First, make sure you have a clear idea of the types of social channels you want to invest in at this stage. If you’re launching a new product/service, it may be in your best interest to focus on a few key platforms. For another example, a social media manager at a large company will likely choose to build out their presence on a few different social networks. Different people at different levels and workspaces may wish to have different niches focused on different platforms.

Whatever the strategy, it is important to figure out whether the resources you have available make achieving success with a social media strategy possible or not. If you don’t know, reach out to your team and get to know who will actually be handling Twitter and Facebook, etc., so that you can prospect out resources and schedule them when you need them.

When discussing how to ensure success with social media, keep in mind some people will optimize for conversions, while others may prefer to be engaged with and remember the brand. If you choose a strategy that focuses primarily on conversion optimization, it’s important to consider the long-term consequences of neglecting such efforts, as some of your potential customers may eventually become repeat customers. It is also imperative to consider how passive social media platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest may impact your company’s brand perception and ability to build shareholder value.
Create a content calendar.

How To Start A Social Media Strategy For Your Small Business

How A Social Media Expert Can Help Your Business Grow

Barrie 24/09/2021

So How A Social Media Expert Can Help Your Business Grow?

Social media is the new marketing frontier. It’s where people are spending most of their time online, and it’s where you must be if you want to be found by your customers.

But if you’re an entrepreneur starting a business, you don’t have time to learn everything on your own. That’s why you need an expert!

1. Social media is a big commitment

Social media is a big commitment, and you should avoid trying to do it all yourself. It’s hard to keep up with all the platforms, especially if you’re doing it for your job. Instead, delegate the responsibility to a team member or a social media agency.Only hire people with the right experience and skills and who you are ready to manage. You’re going to work with them on a daily basis to maximize your efforts.
So who do you turn to when you want to learn social media tips and tricks that you can apply to your business?

The artists: experiment, fail, refine
Creativity is not a function of knowledge. It is something that you just find and experiment with. Whatever business challenge you’re facing, creativity is going to be the answer. It is not a given that you will find the right solution, but it is nearly impossible to do the wrong one.
The greatest strategist of our time, Napoleon Hill, said it best:
Creativity in business should be confined within the limits of experience, and must not be overstuffed with theories, theories which do no prove themselves, but only confuse the issue… Let experimentation be essential if you want to make progress. — Napoleon Hill
The Siloing of Creativity by Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the history of entrepreneurship. His new book “The Limit” tells an exciting adventure of innovation and entrepreneurship through the works of twentieth-century engineers and inventors. Each one of their ideas was bigger than the previous one, but they adhered to a single principle and an unbreakable commitment. The result? Propelled by a singular vision, Anderson changed the way people live and work.
Strategic flexibility is the name of Chris’s game. It means he can bend the rules as long as the rules are flexible. He finds limitless opportunities for expansion and experimentation when he follows rules that say:
Can’t do it all. Make it one-tenth of the way.

Expert

2. Social media can be used effectively to grow your business

Social media is a great way to connect with customers and to build a loyal following. Many people don’t have time to read blogs, so using social media is a great way to reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. Social media allows you to interact with people, answer questions, and build trust.
I started my social media journey when I sold my company to a media company in 2009. At that point, I already knew that social media is important, but I was not sure how to start. I had to hire an employee who could help me build my online presence. Unfortunately, my previous manager was not the most helpful, so I did not hire the best person to start with. Instead, I did what any good entrepreneur does: I researched every possibility!
In my research, I found that there were some basic books that can guide even the beginners about how to use social media. I found them useful, but still required a lot of hard work. Why can’t I just read the book that has a section about SEO? I was searching for one, because I’ve heard that it’s the best book for getting good at SEO! But I come to find that the only section about SEO is in the last chapter of the book. I have finished the last chapter, and I can tell you that I won’t be needing to read the rest of the book to get an answer about SEO. However, I did get to read the different sections that are…
Internal Linking
Rel=Author
Twitter Cards
Internal Linking is the question we all want to know how to answer. The best way involves creating a unique internal link in every page of your website. You do it either by linking to the specific content, or by using rel=“nofollow.” Below is an example of the correct code that Google recommends.
This code sends the visitors to a specific section of your website when they visit your website.

3. Why you need help from an expert if you want to succeed at social media marketing

If you’re going to do social media marketing, make sure you have an expert on your team to help you. Social media has been around for a while now, and there are people who have been able to make a living from social media marketing. Find a social media marketing expert you can trust and ask them to help you with your strategy.

Recently, I experienced the magic of hiring a social media expert. When social media was new, a friend told me they found an unemployed man in the Philippines that could do all the work I was looking for on social media. I was skeptical, but after a few months of working with this guy, I found out he was high on local greek yogurt, and his biggest challenge was a lack of sleep.

The good news is I was able to hire my social media expert through an advertising auction. If you plan on doing this yourself, set a budget for what you’ll need and see if you can find an unemployed local expert on Fiverr or Upwork. Then, interview this person about their social media marketing expertise. Make sure you can trust this person, it’s important when you begin social media marketing to have an unbiased social media expert on your team.

If you’re an entrepreneur, hiring an expert can help you cover more ground. Expertise is a great marketing tool, it’ll make you stand out from the rest of your competition. Remember, your brand and your products or services have to speak for themselves. Your social media expert can help you defend your brand when your competitors are getting creative. They are a marketing resource that can broaden your reach.

Do you know how long it takes to take a photo on your smart phone compared to a camera from 10 years ago? 10 years ago it was 20 seconds, now it can take as long as 30 seconds.

It can be frustrating to get photos and videos on social media after taking so long. But that’s where social media marketing becomes a game-changer.

4. Choosing the right social media expert for your business is key

The right social media expert can help you build your business. Whether you’re starting out or already established, it’s important to get help from the right social media expert to make sure your social media accounts are successful. Check out this blog post for tips on how to choose the right social media expert for your business.
Showcase your community

At the end of the day, people will choose businesses based on how accessible they are. If you can connect your business with others, your business will achieve even greater visibility.
Building your business’s community is the foundation of SEO. By reaching out to others in your community, you can grow your brand. When you start a social media campaign, it’s important to first develop your target audience. After doing research and gathering notes, brainstorm ideas for what you want your followers to achieve.
Your social media expert can help you develop a strategy to reach out to people in your target audience. When reaching out to renowned people, the goal isn’t necessarily for your followers to follow their every wish. Instead, your social media expert can help you establish how your target audience will feel once they’ve accomplished what you want them to achieve.
Start a YouTube channel
When you’re just getting started and no one knows about your business, there’s nothing better than creating a YouTube channel for your business. It’s an easy, free, and effective way to engage your community online.
As your YouTube channel continues to grow, the more videos you create, the more your videos can be shared with others. You can continue to build other important content on your website as well, such as newsletters, case studies, and more.
By creating a YouTube channel for your business and collecting valuable feedback from your audience, you can continue to dig your business even deeper.
Schedule social media status updates
Apart from creating “evergreen content,” social media is a strategy that can benefit your business.

5. How to find the right social media expert for your business

Many people think social media is just for big businesses, but that’s not true. It’s for everyone, because social media is the best way to communicate with your audience. If you’ve never hired a social media expert before, you might be wondering how to find the right one for your business.Ready to find your social media expert? You can’t… right?
The truth is you can find a great social media expert within minutes of searching online for real estate businesses.
Hiring the right social media expert is not hard once you’ve found them. A quick Google search should help you find exactly who you need. After you hit the search button, you’ll be taken to a page that asks to fill in some crucial information that will be used to find the right person for your business.
On this page, you will find all the details you need like:
Their preferred methods of helping people, their social media handles
Their education level
Their expertise (are they a local expert? an extrovert? etc.)
Their company
Last but not least, you may want to ask the social media expert if they would be willing to develop a social media strategy for your business. This tracks, tests and filters the best online marketing strategies for your business.
After that, an ideal social media expert will quickly develop a relationship with you and your business. You could see strong results within hours!
Here is a list of metrics the best social and online social media experts should have. This list can be used to quickly evaluate their expertise for your business.
Twitter Handle
How often do they tweet? Every minute is important. Don’t assume that experts are tweeting because they have something going on!
Follower Count
Twitter isn’t the only social medium you should use. You must determine how active and influential the experts are on their social media platforms.
Posts
Experts should post new content on a consistent basis.

Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager – Choosing The Right Facebook Expert

Barrie 24/09/2021

The Facebook Ads Manager platform has been a revolution for advertisers all around the world, allowing them to create and manage their campaigns from a single place. But with so many options out there, how do you choose the right company? In this article, we’ll take a look at a few key points that will help you find the perfect Facebook Ads manager for your business.

1. What is a Facebook Ads Manager?

Ads Manager is Facebook’s free business tool that helps you create, manage, and optimise your Facebook ads. You can use it to create ads, run campaigns, view performance, get feedback, and more. To get started with Ads Manager, go to www.facebook.com/adsmanager.

Google Calendar is another common (but controversial) tool used by marketers to plan their social media marketing. Because Facebook ads are a paid opportunity, it can be difficult to re-market when a campaign is over. So marketers sometimes end up in a situation where they build in events to their calendars so they can still focus on re-marketing when they want to. Which works for some people, but not for you.

In this post, I’m going to answer a few questions about Facebook Business Events: Should you use them? When should you use them? How do they fit into a paid marketing strategy?
. Google Calendar Is Not A Good Fit For Your Business

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the different types of return and cancellation policies for e-commerce businesses and how this impacted conversions for both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar businesses. As a result of that, some of you asked me why I didn’t take a side in the e-commerce debate in this post. It’s because I don’t feel comfortable ruling out another type of medium when a business might want to promote its birthday cake icing. Lots of different kinds of businesses want to pick up the Facebook traffic and call this from a UK-centric perspective.

Whatever your industry is, I could probably write a post saying the exact same things. I also think they in common: a business needs to send out relevant marketing to relevant people to generate traffic. Location-based marketing is an essential part of that equation. If you are clicking on a link on a location-based sponsored post, you are not a noise to continue running ads against.

2. Why you should choose a Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is the new name for the Facebook Business Manager. Facebook Ads Manager is the best way to create, run, and optimise your Facebook ads, because it helps you work more efficiently, get better results, and save time. It combines everything you need to create and manage your ad campaigns into one place.

. The new name and everything you need to know
Facebook Ads Manager is now known as Facebook Ads Manager, replacing the business manager role that previously existed within the new platform. This was done to streamline the ads team and provide more visibility for marketers using Facebook Ads.

In order to use Facebook Ads Manager, you need to:
Be a Facebook user with an Ads Account. If you use a paid service, you need to use the Ads Manager app or gain access to your accounts.

Meet minimum requirements for your company and ad format by checking the following boxes:
Ad copy and targeting Copy length and formatting Maximum spend allowed for the product or service Quantity of impressions allowed Existing PPC spend and budget Rev ad spend Cryptic impressions a minimum of 3 per day for the duration of the campaign
Create a group defining your industry and ad format – To simplify your experience we recommend that you use the no parameter group, which will automatically be populated with keywords. To define your industry and ad format, add parameters (parameterised text) using the below process:
On the Edit ad groups screen, under “Ad Advanced:” click on the “Add a parameter” button Select “Add” from the “String options” dropdown, then type in (or copy and paste) your ad format’s name Ex. Appearance

. Accessing your parameters
Access your Facebook Ads Manager groups via the following link:
Once you have access, you will see your ads configured in the second tab (Ad groups). You can enter your custom information and upload your videos and images. This is where all your key information—such as your brand name, targets, and messaging—are located.

3. How to choose the right Facebook Ads Manager for your business

Facebook Ads Manager is a great tool for businesses, but it may not be the best fit for every one of your campaigns. Before you get started, ask yourself the following questions:

1) Do I need to run multiple campaigns? If you’re running multiple campaigns, it’s best to use Facebook Ads Manager.

2) Do I need to move away from SEO?

Once you understand your business, you can decide which tools make the most sense for you. It’s great to have in-house expertise when it comes to your website, but you’re better off hiring an expert to drive traffic across your website and in to your brick-and-mortar stores. 3) How many conversions do I need to hit in each of my campaigns? While it’s great to have data on clicks and impressions for your landing pages, remember that conversions aren’t just a number. They have a different flavor depending on a whole host of variables, like product offers, various campaigns settings, etc. We only crawl sites that have successfully sent traffic and average conversions per landing page and category – typically 50. As a result, you can see conversions for a given conversion source while also knowing what % of each conversion source’s traffic you’re driving every month. There are two (free and paid) tools that can help you get even more conversions: Omniture and Conversion Rate Optimizer. Or, you can do it manually 🙂

As you now know, Facebook Ads Manager is a great tool for driving traffic and conversions with your own site. But how many of you actually use it? To find out, we surveyed a sample of over 300,000 Facebook Ads managers about how they use their platform. For full details on our survey methodology, check out our additional blog post here.

4. Use this checklist to find the right Facebook Ads Manager for your business

There are different Facebook Ads managers to choose from.With so many features and useful tools, it can be difficult to make the right decision. To help determine all of your options, we will take a big, big step by pulling up profiles of all the top-ranked Facebook Ads managers to find the best one for you.

It should be noted that the following criteria are important for a perfect Facebook Ads manager:
Once you have determined which one you want to use, it will be valuable to understand what’s unique about each one of them. Additionally, you will want to know how frequently they update their service and what sets them apart.

Let’s take a look at the Facebook Ads icon and analyze if it truly represents the best Facebook Ads manager:

1: Most features and tools
2: Simple interface
3: Cost-effective

These three points are the major selling points of this software: it’s easy to use, easy to understand, and most importantly, it works wonderfully for all of the marketing companies. This point alone should make you decide on whether you want to stick around in this were:
The next things we want to concentrate on are the features aside from creation:
Note: creation features are only included in their paid version.
What’s nice about these apps is how they work around the data they collect. For example, many offer options in terms of combining different pixel data to target specific audiences, detailed by candidate search criteria.
What’s not as nice is that they don’t have a great price tag. Obviously, if you need this software in order to run actual ads you will use it for free.

5. How to negotiate with a Facebook Ads Manager

Negotiation is a great skill to have. It’s a skill that’s especially important if you work in a creative field.Marketers use negotiation to find publishers to write for or brands to partner with. And being good at negotiation is even more important when you’re trying to find investment from a higher ed institution (as most PR firms have student interns).
Setting Up Your Facebook Ads Manager

Before you start looking into your options, you should consider setting up your Facebook Ads Manager. Obviously, if you already have an account, you will not have to do this. But if you don’t have one set up, it’s best to have one set up before you go searching. It will help you avoid spending your time in the future and improve the chances of getting your job offer accepted.
As with any communication platform, you will need to have someone set up your Facebook Ads Manager account first. But this person should have a great understanding of Facebook Ads, which is crucial when you’re trying to work with a major media property. (In case you’re not familiar, HubSpot written their own guide to Facebook Ads a few months ago, which you can check out here.)

Setting up a Facebook Ads Manager is quite simple. You log into Facebook and click on “Manage Audience.” You’ll see a big list with all the people you have connected with Facebook and all their respective audiences. Under the Audiences, you will see a big tab called “All Audiences.” Click this tab and enter all your available ad accounts, as well as the Facebook Ads specific segment that you’re setting up. Click “Create Ad.” You will then be asked to set a “medium”. You can choose to use either “Option 1” or “Option 2,” if you have two different ad accounts (for example, one for educational institutions, one for internet businesses).

Ways to Build Your Business with Content Marketing

Ways to Build Your Business with Content Marketing

Barrie 24/08/2021

Ways to Build Your Business with Content Marketing

If you’re reading this, you’re probably at the stage where you’re wondering how to build your brand. You may already be blogging, but are finding it hard to get traction. This article will show you how to make the most of content marketing for building your business.

 

Content marketing is a powerful medium for building long-term relationships and expanding your brand presence. Even if you’ve been in business for two years or less, you likely have a presence online. If you’re putting in the effort to build quality content, it builds your brandability and it helps you to be found by your customers.

Today, I want to focus your attention on two small but powerful tools for building your brand. They are:
GrowthHackers.com

You’ve heard of GrowthHackers.com. If you’re interested in web analytics, widgets, and viral marketing, check it out. It’s a recruiting hub for growth hackers. You fill out a challenge and if you’re interesting enough you’ll be offered to join the site to show your stuff.

In this post I will show you how GrowthHackers.com works and I’ll talk about the importance of building connections with others to help you (and your company) grow.

But first…
Why Build Relationships with Others?
Building your brand is no fun, and, well, being an entrepreneur is definitely not the easiest job in the world. At some point you have to say goodbye to being the Wright Brother or take on being the Picasso of your field. Yet, the people you meet online will make or break your future.

If you don’t build relationships, do you feel like you wasted years of your life building a talent that’s now obsolete in your field? Or did you only hit a speed bump in your career and realize how slow your growth was? In either case, relationships matter.

You see, cultivation of relationships is the key to success. Without it you will never make the progress you need to.

Let me ask you this: If you want to keep doing your current job as a marketer or if you want to go into real estate full time, do you think this is a good idea?

How so? You will lose your job and that will decimate your wealth. You will miss out on opportunities. You will just get in less practice. How are you going to do it all if you don’t get the chance to build those relationships?
If you think building relationships is hard, don’t do it! If you follow my rules below, you will have a lot of success with making positive changes in your life.

The following rules will work for sure. Building relationships will push you forward and give you the opportunity to further accelerate your growth.

Rule # 1: Respect the Expert
Always respect the expertise of people working in your field.

Let me start this story by saying, I’m a proud non-owner of Aston Martin DBS.
I bought my first car from a dealer in 1986 and have an Aston Martin V12 Zagato to this day.

I never wanted cars. Yes, I knew what they looked like, but I didn’t particularly like them. Cars seemed like too complicated of a solution to my problems. I still consider them boring to this day.

Otherwise, I’ve always paid for my cars, saving up to buy them. I sold my first car when I got married. I bought my first house four years later. I drove these things like hell.
This bitter experience taught me two things:

I had to learn the realities of the car purchase cycle. It was a good lesson in budgeting and prioritizing because as an individual, when you buy something, you have to entertain the idea that you’re buying it for years.
The opposite is true for businesses. You likely want your customers to be ordering regularly because then it becomes difficult to decide when to cancel their subscription and forget about them forever. The sooner you cancel a customer, the sooner you save yourself the headache of having to come back to them.
When it comes to digital marketing, your product or service isn’t a car.

A brand is your entire ecosystem. It includes your existing website, social media, newsletters, branding, apps you’re launching, all the advertising you’re doing (on Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc) and all the avenues you’re taking to communicate with your customers.

Now you already know that you don’t want customers who aren’t happy or who leave you in the dust.
However, if they do leave, you don’t want them to feel abandoned. That’s why it’s so important to have a process in place to keep up engagement with those who remain.

You should follow the same process for your brand. This article explores exactly how companies build a brand for all their channels.

Building a brand is actually pretty simple. However, it only becomes simple when you combine pieces your work across channels to a unique brand strategy that works for you.

This process isn’t complicated by design, and in this article, we’ll cover the important details like:
If you struggle to build a brand, make sure all the pieces make sense for you. Your brand needs to be confident, youthful and influential. It needs to have five core attributes that are easily recognizable and consistent. Essentially, this means that all this work should be purposeful.

 

There are two types of bloggers:
There’s a reason that 94% of B2B buyers say that brand’s content gives them a sense of belonging.
It’s also worth noting that 41%-60% of the consumers will steer clear of brands that do not value the content they produce.

If you’re not on Pinterest, you might not even know what Pinterest is. We have it from Ryan Terrett, the owner of Socialstreamator — who explains:
“After years on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now a huge stake in Etsy, having a direct connection to our customer has continued to drive inspiration and action on our designs and ideas. There is so much noise in the marketplace, but it’s clear where the action is… on social media.”
I thought that nobody uses Pinterest, but there’s this huge community of people creating Pinterest boards related to your brand.

It’s not uncommon to see brands posting their products on the platform every day. Here are the results that Pinterest always delivers:
Yes, it’s easy to lose track of time when you’re pinning around all day but having a captive audience is what will help you leverage your brands visibility.

That’s why 25% of individuals in a recent survey said that collaboration is the most valuable strategy when trying to stay updated with the latest trends.

Pinterest has a lot of features that help marketers boost engagement with pinning:
It’s all about being personable and engaging with your audience.

Whether it’s through answering their questions, sharing insight, or simply thanking them for taking the time to engage — it’s all about being beneficial and making them feel included.

It can be challenging for brands to get traction on social media if they’re not sure what to say, or what to promote.
When you’re in multiple different niches, it becomes less clear what to talk about. You may be afraid of sounding controversial, or afraid of contradicting your clients.

The last thing you want to do is say something that might turn people off.

That’s why brands should be investing in backed video formats and regularly publish new videos in order to stay ahead of their competition.

Luckily, video content is one of the most effective ways to boost engagement and to garner targeted attention entirely through video formats. According to Neil Patel of Booking.com,

“When creating a video for your business, include up to six seconds of your brand or story, with anywhere from 2–8 seconds of top promo content. You can also include a call-to-action, want-ad, and more content as you see fit.

7 SEO Strategies for Ecommerce Sites

SEO Strategies for Ecommerce Sites

Barrie 23/08/2021

If you’re running an ecommerce site, you know how hard it is to drive traffic to your product pages. To boost your organic search rankings and traffic, see this article.

 

It’s not enough to just have a product that looks great — you also need to be able to explain what exactly it does and how your customers will benefit.

To create a compelling, user-friendly product page in your shop, provide useful, actionable information. The best place for this is below the product banner.

When a visitor comes through your website, they’ll either be browsing products or scrolling through the product gallery. What they’ll forget, however, is that you can create a compelling background for each product through product background pictures.

Now that you know how to take a great product shot, get started on how to benefit both yourself and your customers by providing a background image for each product. First, find the images you prefer and make sure there aren’t too many different products in your portfolio. Make sure your background image includes a quote from your business’ website, its tagline, and an indication of its appearance on the product page.

Product background pictures should be no more than 300 pixels wide and 300 pixels high. Your images should be shot in Full HD. Leave the background blur enabled if you want your background to better match the color or tone of the product.

Ask your wife or significant other to take a picture of you with your product. With Better Marketing, you have full creative control over the background of your product page. Your account includes over 200,000 products in your portfolio, so it certainly is possible to post multiple product photos. Simply place them in folders and move around them.

Here are the current best practices for product backgrounds and products.
Ensure that the product matches the style of the underlying product page. This will make the background of your product look appealing to users. Title your product page with the line “See how we’re really different from all other competitors!”

Your product page has to be suitable for all businesses, be they ecommerce, retail, or any other type of business. This includes the tagline, which specifies some key benefits your company will provide to customers.
Use your brand colors wherever possible. Your colors can present brand messaging and could convince potential customers to follow your reports and buy your products. Also, ensure you position your product clearly in both your product thumbnails (left and right sides of your product block) and your product detail sections (top right corner of the website, along with product cart).

Product thumbnail illustrations are great for product images and can carry additional weight with shoppers when deciding whether or not to click on a specific item.

 

Even though we could add a few hundreds (or thousands) of product pages, and they might work for some people, they just don’t perform well without a lot of extra work. Google’s product index focuses mostly on category pages. If I have six product pages, but I also want total category pages with descriptions, reviewers, categories by color, drop downs, etc, I’m going to be a lot more successful. As an example, you can check out the orange category pages on Tesco’s website.

Recently, I discussed how to add a products per page to your.htaccess file.
The Problem With 200 Paginated Content
What if you have a few thousand product pages that need to be crawled, indexed, indexed, and indexed some more? No problem; use.htaccess to rewrite XML sitemaps to show a 200 status code.

The problem with this approach, however, is that soon Google will be crawling your entire site, and you’d need to get new—and improved—product pages in place.

I asked Martin Pezet, product manager at Frac.tl, if they’re aware of any tools or methods to monitor indexation of paginated products…
Martin answered:
There are a few services that monitor existing paginated content across a set of pages, but ultimately we need to have a repeatable process. We do try to monitor it, but it is tiresome to monitor a couple thousand pages anyway. Therefore we decide to add indexes only on individual pages. We just grab static URLs of single pages by searching for frac code “12345” (quotes added). Then we quickly add parameters to walk through the additional pagination (i.e.:… foobar…>) from those indexes.

As you can see, Martin added a parameter in Roboto3.php to tell the crawler not to crawl deeper than the build number 1 of the paginated content.

By specifying 200 on all of your pagination content, and only having improved pages (which the crawler really doesn’t want to crawl), you can add them to your XML sitemap and get them added in to your normal Google index!

Or will they?
Menachem Richler, director of Systems for SEO at NVI, asked me this question via Twitter…
Another Search Engineer at Moz, John Mueller, is on the panel with Martin Pezet today; both of them will be discussing indexation and Googlebot. John says [during Q&A], “Google will not index text content on product pages.”

So, will they?
The Search Engines Might Answer Slowly
John says they are “working on it.”
Martin says [during Q&A], “Some people expect it”
Barry Schwartz, Search & Social at Ayima, says, “It’s going to happen.

 

According to SearchMetrics, 73% of consumers wouldn’t visit an ecommerce site or an app outside of a branded search or ad engine. This report illustrates a lot of the challenges that most sellers must face when they wish to run their own eCommerce storefront.

The obvious one, right? Selling online shouldn’t require you to build a ‘dumb’ or boring product page.
Wrong. Until you think about how you’re selling your products all the time while shopping online, it’s best to avoid dichotomous thinking.
There are essentially two aspects to creating attractive product pages:
Depending on the type of business you’re in, there’s a pros and cons to either approach. The first approach that a lot of sellers tend to follow is the product listing then subsequent product images.

It’s a method that works for them because it’s the most convenient to keep adding products to your cart as you browse through your catalogue.

This method works until you start to see features competing for your existing attention and capacity. Aside from that, the images can be rather bombastic or feature graphics that overtake the scroll view of the page. This will bog down your site as I previously mentioned, resulting in fewer views.
On the other hand, there’s the second approach that a lot of product listing creators adopt, namely a product search.

This is where you’ve got you covered because they’ll serve up your product listings, and this time, you’ve got some sort of algorithm at your disposal that’s able to sort through them and show you the best products for your search.

As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t recommend using Product Search as a method to create product listings.
I would much rather employ an SEO method that focuses on sending searchers to a more natural place to find me — the main product page of my store.

Shopping online is something that you’ve likely become notoriously adept at over the years. Whether you’re on Facebook, Instagram, or one of the countless other platforms out there; the end result is the same, you get shopping and have an urge to make all purchases you see fit with your goals.
We know this method is effective when it comes to increasing the searchability of your product.
Let’s say you’re a Black Friday surfer at heart.

Now that you know where you need to boost your presence, and how to position yourself in each of your social media channels, the second component is to create a social media checklist from scratch.

Instagram Advertising is a powerful tool for brands and individuals

Instagram Advertising For Businesses & Individuals

Barrie 01/07/2021

Instagram has 1 billion active users! If you’re not using it for business, you should be.

 

1. Instagram Advertising is a powerful tool for brands and individuals

If you’re looking for a tool to grow your Instagram account, look no further than Instagram Advertising. I’ve seen it work for personal accounts and for brands, and it’s a great way to reach new audiences and grow your account.

Depending on the budget you’re able to allocate, you can promote posts, run contests, and more. In this post, we’ll take a look at exactly how to do it.

Just like any other social media platform, Instagram has a simple set of rules. If you don’t adhere to these rules, you risk losing your account. This does coincide with Instagram’s Terms of Service, so it’s something you need to be familiar with if you ever want your account to be safe.

Sponsored posts run counter to Instagram’s Rules of Engagement, which state:
“Sponsored, editorial, and branded posts cannot contain clickbait or other misleading titles. Your posts must make it clear to the viewers that they are sponsored. Your Instagram post should be an integral part of the story presented by your brand, and must not stray beyond the brand’s editorial content or reach your content following another brand’s posts.”

Your post must also comply with the rules regarding excessive Photoshop use and gratuitous use of copyrighted images.

When running sponsored posts, follow these guidelines to ensure that your page becomes exclusive for a narrow audience exclusively.

Whenever possible, I recommend going with someone who already has a large following. If you have an established brand or category, engaging with other brands or your niche can work.
There are two main types of sponsored posts.
These are posts that are paid (for example $500, $1,000, or $5,000). Promoted posts can have up to five sponsored posts.

These are posts that are part of your follower’s feed, so their posts are pushed to your followers instead. To figure out which type of posts work for you, compare your business or Instagram hashtag feed to others in your niche.

2. Let’s talk about the anatomy of an ad on Instagram

If you’re posting and advertising on Instagram, you need to know the anatomy of an Instagram ad. An Instagram ad is a picture or video that you post to your Instagram feed.

It’s also an ad that a business pays to have on your feed. In both of these cases, the ad is made up of several parts.

Previously, each part was designed and choreographed by a marketer for the ad, but now it has been segmented and streamlined so that virtually anyone can run an Instagram click farm or run an Instagram ad.

The most important part of the ad is the CTA button, which encourages users to click a button if they want to finish that ad.

You’ll need a smartphone. If you don’t have one, that’s OK. The smartphone’s camera and imaging capabilities can do the trick. This tutorial will teach you how to take a picture in the camera app, how to import it into your photo editing program, how to use filters on your photo, and how to edit your photo. Most people, when they step up to an iPhone or Android phone, simply want to get selfies or upload selfies. Don’t get hung up on getting one just right.

When you take a selfie, the phone will make a small digital thumbnail of itself in the middle of the photo. In Instagram’s ad editor, you can use these thumbnails as part of a thumbnail for your ad.
When you use this technique, it forms the basis for an ad. You are the business. Instagram is a photo-focused platform, but you’ll have to be careful not to run ads on photos of your cat or a naked woman.

Now that you understand how to take a picture in Instagram and how to use filters on your video, click the pencil icon in the bottom left corner. From there, click the back button, and your photos will be deleted from your camera roll.

Now that you have a built-in button to take and edit a selfie, you are ready to run an Instagram ads campaign.

3. What should you know before launching your first campaign?

If you’re hiring for any of the marketing positions that I mentioned in the article, Instagram is where you need to be to stand out amongst the crowd.

With a click-through rate around 4.89%, it’s clear why Instagram is a massive source of leads. And, this is just one reason why I believe a large percentage of mobile marketers should use it.

It can be a great way to stand out amongst the competition.

There is so much content these days — it’s difficult to know where to start. I plan to be the one person who helps you figure out where to direct your energy.
Instagram lets you follow other marketers that are helping grow their businesses.
It allows you to read what they are posting about.
It makes it easy to send them your marketing ideas.

If you’re following enough people, you might start to see common themes. Follow and interact with people with similar interests. People will also send you useful information.
The social media space in 2021 is incredibly competitive. If you want to stand out amongst the other competitors, then don’t be afraid to reach out to influential people in your industry and ask them for feedback.

For example, when I was starting out as a seo specialist, I was being told what a great writer I was by people all over Medium.

But, by asking one person in the publication if they thought my material was quality, I was able to learn to value other pieces of content more. Now, I know that if I were to continue asking people if I was a good writer, my results couldn’t have gotten much better.

4. Learn how to target your ideal audience through their interests and/or behavior on Instagram

With social media, it’s easier than ever to target your ideal audience through their interests and behavior. You can use social media to find people you want to target, then create content that appeals to them based on their interests and behavior. These are called “micro-audiences.” By “targeting your micro-audience,” I don’t mean just manually following people or people you think they should follow. I mean using your industry or niche to create a relationship with the people that matter.
Families are powerful. When people talk about the power of relationships, family is top of mind. It’s understood that family and other types of relationships work. Yet, most people fail to realize family connections are their marketing goldmine because they think they are isolated individuals. But according to a study by Differential Success Institute, 58% of millennials have family or friends who use social media.

This should not be a surprise. After all, most people are socialized as children in a world where it’s either cool or boring-just get a job and get to the next stage. Once we reach adulthood, our social circles expand to include friends and family we’ve never met face to face.

It isn’t just the people you surround yourself with that matter. Using your work environment or industry to create a social connection with people allows you to establish connections that can be used in the future for all kinds of marketing. With an affiliated membership chain, it changes the game once you realize you have a community of followers.

The power of the micro-community extends beyond just the people you follow. The Affiliate Network, an association of data brokers that provides marketers with data on consumers through membership fees, is an industry testament to this. In an interview with David Wyld (based on his blog post Create a Real-Life Real-Advantage), he says:
I want my audience to connect with me because they see me as a friend. And if they know my friends, they understand why I make the choices I do.

5. How to use targeting tools to reach the most relevant audiences for your business with Instagram advertising

Targeting tools on Instagram let you connect with the audiences that will be most relevant to your business.

For example, if your business sells cosmetics, you can target people who are interested in makeup and beauty products with your ads. If you run a fitness business, you might want to target people who like to work out and wear fitness-related clothing and gear.

If you’re more into fashion, you could target people interested in high-fashion items. Instagram has a reputation for being very company-centric — many users have even created brand pages entirely on the platform with the sole intention of growing their brand as a whole.

By doing so, Instagram users can connect with brands in the best way possible — it’s a direct connection, without the added middlemen (like Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) that get in the way of that connection.

Starting a targeted business on Instagram can seem intimidating, but it’s actually fairly easy once you get the hang of it. Remember that it’s all about differentiating yourself, and not cutting corners.

There are a lot of similarities between Instagram and other social media platforms, but there are also distinct differences.

Most importantly, it’s all about explaining what you’re doing, so the non-technical audience can get a visual of what you’re doing.

Entrepreneurs have to market themselves in a certain way in order to stand out.

A lot of them — myself included — simply don’t understand what the unique selling point is for certain products. It’s enough for a product to be technically good, but there’s no planning behind it — no strategy! This is where Instagram shines!

Investing in an Instagram account can cost anywhere from £20–£500/month. This can sometimes be an overkill if you don’t see quick results from it, but it’s entirely possible.

Once you get the hang of starting your business on Instagram, investing just a few pounds here and there will make the whole process easier. Investing £60 a month is definitely a very lowball price, but it’s only going to get considerably more expensive as time goes on.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Barrie 08/06/2021

If you have a small business you may be wondering whether social media marketing is right for your business. In fact, most small businesses don’t get it. They think that social media marketing is about posting your company updates but the whole goal is to promote sales and boost revenue.

Social media marketing is a powerful tool and a key component in most modern marketing plans. As a small business owner, it is time for you to learn how you can make the most of your content this year and drive customers through to sale. 

Be consistent 

Social media marketing is all about consistency. As a marketing professional, you should ensure that you have a plan to keep your content consistent in tone of voice, style, and timing. If you currently post 3 times a week on your social platforms, ensure that you stick to this schedule and make sure you are able to create content that shows off your brand and keeps people aware of you as they live their daily lives. 

Plan ahead 

When creating a content plan for social media it is important for you to plan ahead and give yourself a few weeks of content at least. Planning ahead makes your life so much easier because you will always have content ready to go should you have a lapse of creativity or a quiet week. Make sure that you schedule using a tool such as Buffer and this will allow you to focus on your other work and come back to planning content when you are ready to. 

Create a calendar 

The best tool you can have as a social media marketer is a social calendar. This will allow you to plan out your posts throughout the year ensuring consistency as well as quality.

A calendar can be made in sheets or on excel and is simply a place for you to brainstorm, come up with ideas and write down your drafts. 

Create different types of content 

When writing content for social media it is important not to stick to only 1 type. There are so many different types of content you can share such as articles, images, carousels, videos, reels, stories, pins, infographics, and more.

Consider the different types of content you could bring to your feed and ensure you start creating some clever content that grabs the attention of the audience. Keep it fresh and make sure to use multiple media to create an interesting feed that people will want to follow and engage with. 

Run ads 

Ad campaigns are the easiest way to get results on social media. As with any form of marketing, spending money to put your brand in front of others is important and it can be incredibly useful to do.

Make sure that you utilize the creation of social media campaigns and target your audience to pull them in. Once you identify who your target audience is you can create audiences for your social media platforms, and ads will either generate conversation, likes on your page, or leads to your website. 

Integrate with HubSpot

Using a marketing tool such as HubSpot is a useful way to help you understand your social media posts as well as track them as they funnel through to sales. Once you start gathering information of customers, you can build contacts, generate leads, and funnel through to sales. 

Engage with your followers 

The main reason why social media is so useful for companies is accessibility. When you are trying to engage and sell to your customers, it is important to be accessible to them and social media allows this.

Use social media to talk to your customers and address concerns. This will be a great way for you to bring together your audience and build a foundation of trust and rapport.

If you are chatty and friendly with your audience, they will trust you more and be more likely to choose you over a competitor. 

Use UTM tagging 

If you haven’t tried UTM tagging before – this is something you should input into your social media presence. The aim of social media is to drive customers back to your website and to a sale. But how will you know if your social campaigns have led to a sale?

Using UTM codes on the end of your URL links will allow Google Analytics to track where visits to your website came from, and as a result you will start to see the true impact of social media for your brand. 

 

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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Social Media Expert – What You Need To Know

Barrie 25/05/2021

Social media expert. You’ve seen them in your feed, sharing posts about social media marketing tips, or how to get more followers on Twitter.

They seem to be an endless source of wisdom, but what does a social media expert do? Chances are they’re doing something very different from one another — it’s a broad field! Here’s a breakdown of common job titles and the skill sets behind them.

1. The Social Media Expert Manager: Uses social media to attract clients and promote the company’s brand

The social media manager engages with people on social media platforms and builds the company’s brand, making it more visible and more attractive to clients. They also help the company deal with negative comments and complaints about the brand. Social media managers are employed by corporations, small businesses, and non-profit organizations.

  • 2.1K–5 years+This is the most common job title for social media managers. Typically, these professionals have a strong understanding of social media, data analytics, and have a passion for helping their clients grow on social media. They blend quantitative and qualitative approaches to digital marketing to increase brand awareness and achieve marketing objectives.
  • 2.4–6 yearsThis is a expanding job title. It covers all aspects of content creation and communication strategies for marketing on social media, including the creation of posting templates, the use of graphics, the creation of social media guides and guides to follow, and more.
  • Marketing Manager 2+ years+The real world management of marketing projects with publications, events, digital or offline channels. A lead or editorial specialist performs the creative and strategic function behind the scenes of this role involving coordinating, planning and ultimately executing marketing campaigns. A marketing manager also serves as the department head of the publication or department.
  • Vacuum Power 2+ YearsThis involves managing, managing, and coordinating the creation or delivery of content to users on a whole range of social media platforms or connected devices. The roles may also involve strategic direction of user and content development, constructive critique and development of marketing content, producing advanced digital analytics, and performing due diligence as part of a quarterly planning process.
  • Medium Senior 2+ YearsThis senior-level job title typically spans six to 24 months depending on the project scope, success of previous tasks, and the candidate’s ability to demonstrate a proven record in a particular discipline/area.
  • Politician 2+ YearsThe positions are often part-time and involve conducting research, writing reports, speaking to citizens and policy makers, and engaging with constituents. They involve coordinating the efforts of multiple teams within offices, providing policy and political leadership, writing legislative initiatives, and administering budgets.

2. The Community Manager: Interacts daily with customers online to resolve issues and questions

The Community Manager is one of the most important jobs in a tech company. The Community Manager handles all of the customer service issues that come up as a result of your product or service.This includes things like answering customer service questions, going live with new features in support forums, the list goes on.

The role can also go beyond customer service. A community manager could work with developers and designers to set up surveys, autofill forms, and creating online communities. They also write blog posts, and might even create monthly reports to report the progress of your products. Tech companies thrive on communities.

Community marketing can be very competitive, and many companies shy away from hiring passionate individuals. You may not get instant success, but there are a ton of factors that go into success besides how many followers you have or how many first impressions you make.

This support department is responsible for helping support those who purchase or download a product. With far fewer people initially using social media, companies have less of a backlog of users to onboard and provide support. This support team will help spot and fix issues before they impact thousands of users, while also helping to set overall priorities for the company and their products.

A social media marketing job involves interacting with various organizations daily. To meet the needs of this department, companies often look for individuals who know how to work with clients, both online and off. You know social media is important to someone, whether it’s your parents, a friend, or a company. This person is an essential part of social media strategy, and they’re expected to be resourceful and adaptable.

There are several skills needed to carry out this job: being patient while listening to difficult clients, networking effectively to gain business, perfecting skills for newsletters, creating effective content strategies, and being excellent at networking.

3. The Social Media Marketing Specialist: Creates content for social media, including blog posts, videos, and images.

The role of the social media specialist is to create content for social media, including blog posts, videos, and images. They also help manage the company’s social media accounts by engaging with followers, responding to questions, and providing customer service.

The global growth of social media has created countless new opportunities for business owners. If you’re new to social media, it’s important to know the latest terminology and the points of confusion.

“A social media brand that caters to a diverse audience will attract a diverse audience.” — Marin Beck, Author of Social Media Marketing Hub

The very first thing you need to know about a social media account is who runs it. It’s usually a team, but if it’s your own account, you should have one person in charge. That person needs to have a good understanding of their audience, but also have experience and expertise in a particular topic. They should also have experience managing accounts in their industry, perhaps from your company’s past social activities. A social media professional can also work with other professionals within your company, such as marketing or accounting, to handle each account’s needs. A social media expert should also know how to conduct research within an account.

“An expert in any field who’s concerned about an important subject is a social media expert.” — Marin Beck, Author of Social Media Marketing Hub

“People come to find answers when they’re looking for something necessary to live a good life. They’re doing so because of our global pandemic, and they have been left in challenging times. They turn to trusted sources like Facebook for information and recommendations.” — Ellyn Ruthstrom, CEO of Social Media Results, Author of Connecting with Credibility, Standing Out

“The uniform, consistent language they use is everything.” — John Biden, Former U.S. President

“The word social goes back a thousand years and refers to a social life. Think of it as a club or a social event, a gathering of friends.

(Note: This article has not been verified with the author’s current employer.)
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Social Media Consultancy For Startups

Barrie 24/05/2021

How a social media consultant can help small businesses and startups with social media marketing. From advertising on Facebook and Instagram through to TikTok advertising.

From daily posting on your companies social media profiles and managing your paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to ensure your PPC spend is well withing budget.

This could be the role of your social media consultant.

For those of you that don’t know me, I’ve been a full-time social media consultant for over 18 years.

I have worked with many B2C and B2B companies to grow their social media presence and develop strategies to ensure they stay ahead of the curve.

I specialise in Facebook Advertising and Instagram Advertising. I also advise companies on their Instagram presence and how to optimise their post performance.

I also advise business owners and startups on their Facebook and Instagram advertising strategies and on growing their account via paid advertising.

However, I do have lots of experience with startups, particularly those acquiring a PPC lead via an Instagram influencer or blogger. And I can get down and dirty on how to best build an account, post results, and profile views. This helps a lot of small businesses and startups.

With my experience in helping B2C and B2B companies, I’m widely known as an expert on social media. And to date, my social media knowledge has been passed down to my students during my courses, enabling me to share our knowledge with students and entrepreneurs.

This article is a breakdown of how I built a leading luxury fashion influencer account, how I managed it for clients, what I learned from building it and how them I can help you too.

“Entrepreneurs are great at setting up a little ecosystem around themselves, and that’s great for matching their consumer needs as they seek more brands to support.” Maayan Zeevi, FineXpertise

The Account
“I’d always wanted to be on Instagram, but until I was 17, I never understood people were into it.” Maayan Zeevi, FineXpertise
Luxury fashion and influencer marketing are all the rage today. As a millennial, I understand this. I myself am just starting to explore the world of influencer marketing; we have had platforms like TikTok, Radar and Clubhouse in recent years. And Instagram is quickly catching up.
My course focus is on young entrepreneur startups and female entrepreneurs. Every week, we work with a specific group of entrepreneurs, and each week I develop a specific strategy utilising the feedback and insight gained from completing our weekly assignment.

From setting up newsletter automations for email marketing and launching Email Thought Leadership to stand out from the competition. From public relations’ social media and email campaigns to applying digital marketing lessons sown by the great experts at Ogilvy, Dentsu, Mastercard and Wolff Olins.

Why be left behind under active social media marketing, when you can also fully leverage social media for growth and traffic to your business. To be successful, small businesses and startups need all the help they can get!
Disclaimer: If you do not want to follow a strict set of steps to game social media platforms and drive up your traffic then then you should not be on social media for a while. These are the main things you need to know when it comes to social media and the advice from social media consultants.

It can be seen as a risky business to be on social media or even gaining Facebook and Instagram followers. This is especially the case for start ups because you are still building your business initially. Those first few loyal fans you did not expect as a business owner will be mainly your customers or potential customers who you wait to see grow before you start marketing to them.

“Almost all Facebook users are being induced to post at least once a day.” exitsocialmedia.com
Almost half of all users are changing their account location or removing their accounts entirely due to rule-breaking or unacceptable content. The way we are using these platforms determine if they are being abused whilst a majority of us use them within accepted social norms.

Advertising on social media is a traditionally ‘risky’ choice for business. While it allows users to enhance their businesses profile, there are a few things to consider to really nail down the ROI on social media advertising.

A lot of businesses choose to spend traditional advertising budgets, beyond the typical media spending channels such as radio, billboards, and TV. This way they can leverage it to improve the click-through rates (CTR), conversions and can use the cost as a marketing tool in all areas of the business.

The issue here is traditional advertising can be expensive and even a loss leader for your business. However, social media allows you to put all your campaign spend online and it often doesn’t cost a cent more. Of course you still need to implement some targeted campaigns to keep the ROI.

Obviously, you could choose to run everything offline which can work if you are well established with a bulging website or a trusted brand. However many businesses and online businesses choose to publish more content, in more channels. This is often described as a matter of ‘sustained presence’. Other start ups are effectively building social media businesses.

What Is Social Media Advertising?

Barrie 11/05/2021

What is social media advertising?

Social media advertising is when you pay a company to have them advertise on behalf of you on social media. A lot of people associate social media advertising with things like Facebook and Twitter but the truth is, there are so many more platforms out there that you can advertise on.

Marketers on social media tend to focus a lot on Facebook, but there are so many more ads you can Target on Instagram, Youtube, or Snapchat. I will therefore be looking at how to sell on other platforms than Facebook. At a high level, you are looking to make money when someone sees your ad.

They won’t have to buy your product, but they will see your ad and might click through. The more profitable the ad is, the higher it will rank and get more clicks. You will roughly see a multiplier depending on the ad network (Samsung Audience Network, Adler Analytics, etc.). This means that an ad on Facebook will get 1.1x, but a post on Snapchat might get twice as much traffic!

The reason Facebook is so popular is because advertisers find them super easy to use and productive. They are able to target the people that they want in a targeted way and it can be hard for other ad platforms to compete with that.

There are lots of other variables to consider, like marketers’ budgets or how much technical knowledge they have, but I’d like to make a quick look at the main factors.

For budget purposes, my rule of thumb is: spend £1 per thousand impressions (cpi). This is a concept that gets re-introduced in a lot of places, including here:

Essentially, what this basically means is that if you’re running an ad campaign, think of it just like you would budget to spend on advertising a product and you would divide it into thousand “impression” points. 1 cpi is roughly £0.001 and increases as you go further out.

How do you know if your social media ad campaigns are successful?

The first thing you want to do is look at your cost per impression. The cost per impression is how much your campaign costs every time someone sees your ad. The second thing you should look at is your click-through rate, which is how many times people saw your ad but didn’t click on it. The third thing you should look at is your conversion rate.

What percent of people who saw your ad went on to make a purchase.

If you check the metrics one more time, look at your CTR on your best campaign and determine whether you can make changes if your ROAS is too low. For me, a website has three things: a home page, a blog, and a adsite.

The home page is where I tell people what I do and show them what I’ve done for them. The blog is where I put content that helps my clients with their problems. And my adsite is where I set up visitors to click on my ads.

With calendar years, you need to figure out a way to account for seasonal changes. For example, one year I had a high-crack holiday season, and a low-crack holiday season in spring. Today people are coming into my site in the summertime. That’s one of the challenges of making a site like mine and making sure you’re getting the right audience consistently because they’re going to move through different conditions.

With a website, I tell students on college campuses about the classes they need and write them up for them. You need to have something for all your target markets. On college campuses, you might be writing a brochure about one thing. You might need to write an essay about another thing, and so on. You need to have something that’s different for every student.

Also, with a smartphone, the first thing that people see are ads. You need to get that right. If you get people’s attention with ads — and you want people’s attention with ads — you want the ad designs to resonate with people so they stay on your site.

What types of social media ads do businesses create?

Businesses can create ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn. These ads are most commonly based on a Facebook Pixel, which is a tool that can track your customers’ actions on your website.

Facebook then uses this information to target your customers with ads based on their activity on your website. Before we get too deep into the mechanics of creating ads on Facebook, let’s talk about the location tracking that’s occurring through the Facebook Pixel. There are two parts to this: the sales action that a user has on your website, and the relationship that these pixels have with your Facebook account.

If you don’t want your Facebook Pixel to track your customers across different websites, you should disable the Facebook Pixel in your checkout flow. This is done by adding the following code to your checkout page: That will prevent the Facebook Pixel from tracking users across all of your sites.

In most cases, yes — this is the best option. But for some businesses, they would like to be able to run ads on Google Ads as well. To do this, they need to add an ad extension to their Google Ads account. These extensions are available for most Google products, like:

That’s it. Once you set this up, your ads can be run on Google, Apple, and Facebook. If that’s all you need to get set up, good for you. The next thing you need to know is how exactly your ads are being tracked.

The main source of information Facebook uses to track users is through user IDs and cookies. These are pieces of information stored by the website you’re visiting, and intentionally stored as part of your visit. Cookies may include information about how you came to be on the site, the links you clicked on, and even information about your behavior as you use the site.

Facebook uses a Number of Analytics (NAA) that can track users across browsers and operating systems.

Where can you advertise on social media to get the biggest bang for your buck?

Typically, the best places to advertise for the biggest ROI are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Pinterest. The best thing about social media is that it’s really cheap to advertise there. If you find organic reach for a post on Facebook, it’s around 30 to 40 conversions for every £1 spent. The same thing works on Instagram — around 1 conversion for every £1 spent.

Even Google search can often underperform, but the organic amount found via Google +1 can mimic the ad cost if you focus on the right posts. However, if you are pushing timing and you wish to get high ROI, you can get the best of both worlds by using Google Ads and match synonyms (with context) to your search terms.

A simple mantra you can follow for organic search to reach Twitter followers is to “keep it simple.” It’s all about posting content that delivers a unique value to your followers, fans, and followers of your brand.

The core principle of LeverageBrand is to “leverage your demographic and local characteristics to amplify your audience’s subjective experiences with you.” Everything that can be leveraged is relevant here. So, in order to get to the right audience, show your value first before leveraging your niche to get there.

Feel free to skip straight to the section that relates to you!

Similar to the previous point, leveraging your social accounts shouldn’t be limited to Instagram and Facebook. Nor should it be limited to keywords. As LeverageBrand explains, once you have engaged your audience on multiple channels, you can leverage them all from one single post.

Google +1 is a great way to maximize your reach and reach your business in a big way. However, it’s important to understand that when you are ‘dating’ your audience, you are not looking for a long-term relationship. What you are looking for is long-term transactions.

How much does it cost to advertise on social media platforms, and what are the costs associated with creating ads?

The cost of advertising on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can range anywhere from $5 to $5,000 per day. The cost really depends on your goals and objectives. The more specific and targeted you get with your audience, the more expensive it is to get your message out there.

Like we discussed, advertisers’ budgets fluctuate depending on several factors. One of those is the amount of inventory on their platforms. Some advertisers have thousands of products to choose from.

In general, the smaller the number of products available, the higher the price per day. For instance, If you have 100 available ads on social media, when you have 100 customers wanting your product, you might expect it to cost you a few pounds per day to get those 100 customers to your landing page.

A micro-optimization tip to cut down on the intake time of the advertisements that you’re running is to only have 1–2 ads, per day. That way, it will probably take you only seconds to find the customer you’re looking for.

Other factors that affect the cost as well as the total budget include the number of pages you are displaying ads on, the engagement levels with your audience and the items available for purchase.

Depending on your audience, the cost to get an audience may vary from a few pounds to £20,000+. The client might even ask for that amount, depending on how specific and targeted they can be with their ad. Generally, however, speaking, if you know who your target audience is, and how you would reach them through social media, your cost per day will likely fall in the £10 to £20 range. Often, cost per action (CPA) is a little lower due to customers being more engaged with your ad. If you combine all of the cost per day together, your cost to run your ads might range from a few pounds to a few hundreds (sometimes even less). Again, depending on your objectives and your target audience, your cost may be even less.