5 Eggscelent Easter Marketing Campaigns

5 eggscellent easter marketing ideas

Eggscuse the pun, we only get the chance once a year! Here at The Marketing People, we all enjoy watching what’s going on in the world of Marketing. Easter is a great time of year for companies to use their imagination, and after much debate in the office, these are our favourite Easter Marketing campaigns.

Aldi – Lunch for the Price of an Easter Egg

If you can use the Easter holiday to market your home brand Mint Sauce, you’re definitely doing something right. Calculating the price of a decent Easter Egg at £3.80, the German retailer put together a tasty lunch, including dessert and wine, for the same price! Between a family of four, it would cost £3.80 per head for a lamb dinner, with vegetables, mint sauce, hot cross buns for dessert and a white wine to compliment it. This marketing campaign didn’t just show off their value prices, it did it in style:

aldi easter marketing
Honey, could you pass the chocolate?

Aldi employed the work of Jen Lindsey Clark, chocolate artist, to create a full sized table with a roast dinner made entirely of chocolate. Three weeks, and 50kg of Aldi Easter Egg chocolate later, Jen created everything from cutlery, peas, and wine out of chocolate. They even had a chocolate chair! We’d love a chocolate meeting table in the office but we’re worried Sammy of The Marketing Dogs would sniff it out and eat it during a meeting!

The Co-operative Food – The Good Eggs

Social Experiments are always risky business when it comes to television and internet campaigns. Sometimes the message isn’t as intended, causing controversy. When they work, they’re brilliant and go viral. UK retailer The Co-operative came up with a great idea for a social experiment last Easter, in which a gentleman with his arms in casts would sit on a park bench and struggle to eat his food. Many people walked past and left the man to struggle, but some ‘good eggs’ would help the man eat his sandwich. The Good Samaritans were awarded with Easter Eggs for their troubles.

The reason we love this stunt from The Co-op is the genuine sentiment behind it. Good marketing is always interesting, but it’s even better when it warms your heart at the same time.

Happy Egg Co. – Chick Cam

Talk about a long campaign, the Happy Egg Company ran their Easter Marketing Campaign for the entire lifetime of an egg! We absolutely love this one. Through mid- March up until Easter, The Happy Egg Co. live streamed some incubated chicken eggs, with the stream ending with newly born chickens hatching, and learning to walk!

The Happy Egg Co.’s Google Hangout went viral, for good reason, with people from all around the world tuning in to watch the baby chickens peck away from the inside of their eggs and break free. We all agreed that this was a great use of current technology for viral marketing. The Happy Egg Co. boosted their social presence by inviting the public to name the newly born chicks, sending their Twitter Facebook pages skyrocketing with engagement, they even appeared in the UK trending Tweets for a short while.

Whiskas – Earster Cats

We love animals here at The Marketing People, but you can see that by the blog that The Marketing Dogs write! We really enjoyed this next one, Whiskas grappled the huge iPhone and Android app market (2 BILLION PEOPLE!) by releasing an app that gave users an Augmented camera that put giant bunny ears on their cats. We thought it was genius that cat food could be marketed by virtual bunny ears! Unique marketing campaigns are always great, especially when they have such a huge potential audience. This was a truly imaginative way to get the message out there for Whiskas Cat Food.

We wonder if George will sit this still for a selfie
We wonder if George will sit this still for a selfie

This was one of our favourites, but we’re not sure how Sammy, George and Chops would like a giant pair of ears. Leave us a comment below on who you think should get the Whiskas Earster treatment and keep an eye on the blog for an update.

Tesco – Find the Eggs

We’ve spoken about Pokemon Go on this blog before, and as readers out there know, we thought it was marketing genius. But, three years before it existed, Tesco used the same technology in their #FindtheEggs game. Tesco used a Google Maps based app to get people out and about hunting for virtual eggs, the players who went out and found three eggs would win a chocolate bunny from their local Tesco store.

What we love about this one, is that not only was it a massive viral marketing campaign for Tesco, it also gave people a reason to play it. With prizes such as chocolate bunnies and Samsung tablets, being involved in this campaign was genuine, unlike superficial campaigns that you see today.

Six analytics tools for Twitter

twittonomy - twitter analytics tool

six analytics tools for twitter

 

A lot of time has passed since we first posted this blog on analytics tools for twitter (orginially posted April 2012!), and a lot has changed in the world of social media over 4 years, so we thought it was time for an update

(especially as one of our readers pointed out Topsy, a featured analytics tool, closed down at the end of 2015. Thanks Nina).

And with Twitter booming over the last 4 years, and developing their own analytics tools, it was definitely time for a freshen up of this blog! Here are some of the best Twitter analytics tools you can use for free, all in one handy post.

 

Twitter analytics themselves

(https://analytics.twitter.com/)

 

Twiitter analytics - twitter analytics tool

 

Since our last blog, twitter have released analytics themselves! Which makes things a lot easier for users to get a quick overview on how everything is going.

As with Facebook, Twitter wants you to find what is not working on your page, so you will pay to improve these things. So though you can gain loads of really good insight, it will be accompanied with a side of sales pitch.

We wrote a blog last month all about using social analytics, which includes twitter, as well as Facebook, and LinkedIn, which you can check out here.

 

Great for: Getting the facts from the horse’s mouth, and knowing exactly what is going on with your profile.

 

 

Tweetchup

(http://tweetchup.com/)

 

Tweetchup - twitter analytics tool

 

With Tweetchup you can analyse your own actions and connections, from how many mentions you get, to the users you are most engaged with, as well as where those users are located.

But it’s not just your connections, you can analyse any user’s activity within a certain date range, and see who they’re interact with most, what hashtags they love and when they are sending the majority of their tweets. (great for spying on the competition!)

You can also further analyse keywords and hashtags to get more insight of who is using them, when and where.

 

Great for: Further analysis of the details you can get on your twitter analytics.

 

 

Twitonomy

(https://www.twitonomy.com/)

 

twittonomy - twitter analytics tool

 

All the twitter analytics you could want represented in visual graphs and charts. With plenty of insight into the people you follow and who follow you.

You can export your tweets or followers to excel, if you and your team need to do further analysis of your twitter action while off the site.

You can also get a list of the people you follow who don’t follow you back, as well as followers who you don’t follow back, which is always good to know.

 

Great for: Detailed analytics on both you and your competition.

 

 

 

Twitter Counter

(

 

Twitter counter - twitter analytics tool

 

Twitter counter is a really clear visual tool, however it is the most limited out of our free options.

It enables you to view engagement metrics, get an insight into your audience, as well as compare yourself to the competition.

You also have the option to export stats, which is handy for meetings or discussions about your twitter progress.

 

Great for: a quick clear visual

 

 

Mention Mapp

(http://mentionmapp.com/)

 

mentionmapp - twitter analytics tool

 

Using a ‘mindmap’ style visual to show you where your tweets have stretched to over the last few days, and who you may have reached without realising.

But it’s not just for your profile, you can use it to see the top users for certain hashtags or related hashtags, enabling you to build up your twitter plans.

 

Great for: a very different visual of your twitter footprint.

 

 

Google Analytics

(https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/)

 

Google analytics - twitter analytics tool

 

Google analytics is a pretty essential tool when it comes to your website, and seeing the effect your tweeting has is no exception.

You can do many wonderful things with analytics, and one of those is setting up custom dashboards, to focus on a particular area of interest – such as social results.

There are plenty of guides on the internet to custom social dashboards, or you can download ours directly to your google analytics.

 

Great for: seeing the outcome on your website of your twitter efforts.

 

 

So many questions pop up when it comes to social media, but don’t get stuck, just head over to our social blogs for all the answers you need.

We know that managing social media is a full time job, if you don’t have the time or you’re struggling to manage your online presence, we can help. To find out how we can help, call us on 01543 495752 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com.

 

How do I use Social Media Analytics?

How do I use social media analytics

How do I use social media analytics

It is no doubt that social media can help your business if you use it properly, but how do you know if it’s working?

As social is all about relationship building, you may find it more difficult to track your social results in your regular analytics, which is where social analytics come in.

Most social networks now provide you with their own analytics reports, meaning you can get more out of your social, as long as you take the time to assess them and make changes accordingly.

These are being improved each day, as demand for certain functions grow, but for this post we are going to look at 3 of the biggest social media networks, where you can find your analytics, and how you can use them to smash your social media targets.

 

Facebook

Facebook has recently updated their analytics functions making them a bit more robust, with more options to look back over time, and breaking statistics into more segmented chunks.

If you go to your company Facebook page, you will see at the top of the page “page, messages, notifications, insights and publishing tools”. To get your analytics, you will have to click on insights.

Here your data is broken down into the following sections:

  • Overview
  • Likes
  • Reach
  • Page Views
  • Actions on Page
  • Posts
  • Videos
  • People
  • Local

 

Overview

As you would expect, this is an overview of all of your stats. So for a quick view of your reach, page likes, actions on page, videos and your 5 most recent posts. They also give you handy percentage indications to show if you have improved or decreased since the previous period.

 

Likes

You can see your total page likes over time and how they have improved or dropped. Your net likes, so when people have ‘unliked’ you, as well as when new likes. You can also view where your page likes happened.

 

Reach

This shows your post reach, both organic and paid. You can also see how many people are “reacting”, commenting and sharing. It also includes a handy graph that shows those who have hid your posts, reported as spam or unliked your page. These ‘negative’ results weren’t always easy to find previously, so being able to see when people have done this means you can pinpoint what content is driving your fans to negative reactions. Then finally you can see your total page reach, both organic and paid.

 

Page Views

Page views is quite self-explanatory, you can see how many people viewed your page! But Facebook has made changes, so you can now break that down by section of your page, age and gender, country, city or device. You can also view your top sources to your page, so for example if your website is pointing people to your Facebook, this will show up here.

 

Actions on Page

Actions on page is a great addition to the Facebook analytics, with businesses being able to view how many people clicked to get directions, how many clicked the phone number, how many clicked on to your website, and how many clicked on your call to action button. This can then be broken down by age & gender, country, city or device. Meaning you can really get a sense of how people are using your Facebook page, and if your call to actions on page (eg. ‘Read more on our website’ ‘Call us for a quote’ etc) are strong enough.

 

Posts

Posts is really useful for assessing your current content. Here, not only can you view when your Facebook Fans are online (giving you huge hints on when is best to post), but also how your different post types are doing, and the top posts from pages you watch. You can also review every post you have put live, and see its reach, number of post clicks and how many reaction, comments or shares it gained, which if monitored consistently means you can improve your posts over time by catering the right content.

 

Videos

As most social media users now know, videos and images are normally interacted with more than normal updates, so here you can check on just the videos you have posted. Here you can see you total number of video views, how many 30 second views you have had (showing people were really engaged with your content), and your top videos (with their reach, their views and average completion rate).

 

People

With this section you see a little more about the actual people who like your business. Their gender, age group and location all provide great info on perhaps who you should be targeting your marketing to outside of Facebook, as well as a good indication on who to advertise to if you do go through to Facebook Ads.

 

Local

Local is one of the latest functions Facebook has rolled out on their analytics, which has some really useful information regarding those who are in your immediate area. Though it is quite obvious this is meant to give you more data to use when you are paying for Facebook Ads, it does give you a good indicator of what those around you are doing. And if you are looking to grow locally, this is key. Finding out which gender and age group are most prominent around you allows you to create local “personas” to appeal to, as well as knowing when they are most active on Facebook and what day of the week you should focus on.

With Facebook’s organic reach getting smaller each day, I believe features like “local” will become more prominent, to encourage more businesses to use Facebook ad’s to promote.

 

How can I use Facebook Analytics?

Facebook Analytics are now incredibly in depth, so you can narrow down to key factors you want to improve upon, or more importantly for Facebook, key elements that you would pay to improve. Though there are a lot of paid options with Facebook, and a lot of businesses who have achieved great results from it, and it certainly seems to be the way Facebook wants to take. However, if you only want to keep costs down, you need to really keep track of the analytics that are coming in each week, and manually work on the elements that need more work using the data you have.

 

Twitter

To find analytics on twitter, press the little icon of your profile picture that is in the right hand top corner next to the tweet button and search feature. Select analytics, which will open a new window with your analytics. (If you are using this for the first time, you will have to set up your analytics first.)

You will see a number of headings that cover these topics:

  • Home
  • Tweets
  • Audiences
  • Events

 

Home

Is your overview page really, starting with your 28 day summary, this is a rolling 28 days, so whichever day of the month you click on to it, you can see up to date data on the last 28 days and comparisons to the previous 28 days before that. The 28 day summary includes:

  • The number of tweets and percentage change since last time
  • Tweet impressions and the percentage change since last time
  • Visits to your profile and percentage change since last time
  • Mentions of your company and percentage change
  • Followers and percentage change.

From then you can see a round up of each month, which includes your top tweet, your top mention, your top follower, your top media tweet, your total tweets for that month, your tweet impressions for that month, your profile visits for that month, your mentions for the month and your new followers for that month.

This is a great indicator straight off of how well you are doing on Twitter, and quite a motivational tool as you want to see your percentages in green rather than red.

 

Tweets

Tweets goes into extreme detail. You can see each of your tweets, their impressions, engagements and engagement rate for each tweet. You can look at all of your tweets, your top tweets, your tweets and replies, as well as your promoted traffic. You can also see an overview of your engagement rate, link clicks, retweets, likes and replies. You can also export this data, meaning you can come back to review it at a later date if you wish.

As with Facebook, knowing which tweets created a good reaction means you can update future content to be more like those posts, so you can work to gradually improving your engagement rate.

 

Audiences

Your audience tab breaks down various elements about your audience. From the demographics (gender, language, country, region), to the lifestyle (interests, TV genres), down to even your mobile footprint (most popular wireless carrier, and device).

Again this allows you an insight into who is actually interested in your company, allowing you to create ‘personas’ to market to, who are more likely to show interest.

 

Events

Is really useful for future planning, and allows you to browse events on twitter by category, location, or time, and sometimes can offer an anticipated audience size.

 

How can I use Twitter Analytics?

Twitter is quite similar to Facebook, in that it wants you to find what is not working on your page, and pay to improve these things (They’re still businesses after all). Which again is a valid option, but if you are looking to keep costs down, you will have to spend a little more of your time going over the reports. Take in the interests of the majority of your followers, create, retweet and like more content that relates to that. Use the event function to find relevant events, and use the stats from your own tweets to understand what people are reacting to.

 

LinkedIn

To find your analytics on LinkedIn, go on to your companies page, under your name you will see “Home, Analytics and notifications”. Click analytics.

Here you can view your

  • Updates
  • Followers
  • Visitors

The first thing you will notice is it is all based on one page, and is a lot less detailed than the other reports we have looked at.

 

Updates

On updates you can view each of your posts, the impressions gained, clicks, interaction, followers acquired and engagement percentage. You can also see your engagement figures in graph form, as well as your reach. Once again, the higher the engagement rate on the post, the more you should use that style of post.

 

Followers

On followers you can view your total followers, the demographics, as well as how you compare to other pages. This is great for checking if you are even in the same playing field as your competitors, and if not, how far you are off. You can also see if you are attracting the right level of people to follow your page, you may need to focus on attracting more decision makers to your page.

 

Visitors

You can view your page views, your unique visitors, as well as your visitor demographics. Which is really interesting to see who is visiting but not necessarily following your page. Could you make updates to your page to encourage people to hit the follow button?

 

How can I use LinkedIn Analytics?

LinkedIn is slightly different to the other two networks we have looked at, in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s not as in depth, you don’t get half as much statistics and figures as you do on the other networks, and secondly LinkedIn is still trying to help you improve. Though they still offer a “sponsored” post option, they also provide pointers throughout their analytics of how to improve engagement, How to build relationships and a ‘get inspired’ page too, meaning you can learn more from the site itself on how to improve your posts for absolutely free.

 

So what do I need to do?

It’s a lot simpler than you think…

 

Look at what’s doing well, replicate it again.

Whether that’s a style of post, a time you post, the amount you post, or any other factor of your social media, do it more (but always in moderation, don’t post 60 pictures a day because people like pictures).

 

Look at what’s doing bad, don’t do that again.

If a type of content never receives a response, or your impressions figures drastically drop during a certain point of the day, then stop posting that type of content or at that time of day.

Much like those who preach that to be healthier you need to “eat less and do more” to be great at social media, you need to replicate the good, and ditch the bad. It’s a simple theory, which is correct in essence, but does skim over the hard work, patience and having to motivate yourself every day.

Keep at it, take note of your results, make changes, and things will improve.

 

So now you have all the knowledge of where to find your social analytics, and some idea of how to put it into practice.

If you’re still struggling with keeping track of your social media, then why not give us a call?

Is social media working for my business?

is social media working for my business

is social media working for my business

So you’ve read our blogs this month, and many other blogs and articles and news stories for that matter, but you’re still not sure that social media is actually working for you. So what steps can you take to see if it’s actually making a difference, or if you need to make some changes?

 

Do you currently monitor your social media?

Let’s start with what you are currently doing. How do you currently monitor your social media? Are you doing enough? Are you doing anything at all? Social is a great tool, but like any marketing, you need to be monitoring your efforts so you can effectively see what return you have. But many businesses fail to monitor the actual results from their efforts, or may only take a single statistic of how many immediate, obvious sales were bought in by social.

 

Set up a monitoring plan

So how do you get organised to take in all these stats? First and foremost, take the time to set up a plan, it will save you time in the long run, and give you consistent results. This includes what you want to achieve (x leads per month, x new followers per week etc.), time you can allocate to it, a template of the stats you want to monitor. Having a set up like this, and taking a larger initial chunk of time to set yourself on the right path will save you scores of time in the future.

 

Have you achieved those results?

Frequently assess, and see if you have achieved the results you set out to. Some goals are easier to qualify than others, so if you were looking to achieve a certain amount of new followers than you can see at a glance if you have achieved this or not. Using analytics, you can probably also see when you have gained followers, so you can replicate the results again and again. If you are looking for leads, your definition of a lead may change as time goes on. But again, when you see the positive results you want to see, replicate it again to prove that works.

 

Are you posting enough? Is your target audience there?

If you’re not achieving the results you want, then look at your posts. Are there enough, and is it relevant to those you are trying to reach? Not achieving your results? Dig down into your stats and analytics, and try to see what just hasn’t performed that well, and who your engaged audience are. Does your desired audience use this social platform, and if not, is it worth your effort to continue with.

 

Have you lost anything from it?

When you aren’t achieving obvious sales from your social efforts, it can be hard to see the value, but ask yourself, have you lost anything from it? If you are not seeing any negative effects from it, then maybe you need to wait a little longer to see the positive.

 

Social media is like any other marketing method. Some will see great results from it and others won’t. But before you dismiss it as an option, you need to ensure that you have done all you can. To engage with your audience, given them chance to respond, and consider that even if you’re not gaining anything from it right now, if you aren’t losing anything, is it worth pushing forward for the long term effects?

 

How do I get leads from Social Media?

How do i get leads from social

How do i get leads from social

Lots of businesses talk about getting leads from social media, but it’s all a load of rubbish right? No one can really gain anything from this chatter across the web and get serious business from it?

Wrong. There’s a reason everyone is talking social media, and that’s because it works. You just need to have a little more knowledge, and a lot of persistence to make it work.

Though that being said, there are no promises, it comes down to making sure you are in the right place, at the right time, with the right information for this to work.

And once you have social cracked it serves a number of purposes for your marketing. It’s your brand awareness, it’s your customer service and it’s your inbound marketing. So if you’re really looking to up the results on gaining leads through inbound, what should you be focused on?

 

Build Relationships

Social is not about instant sales. It is about relationship building. Don’t forget that when it comes to searching for leads. Taking the time to interact with others, and to not be anti-social is good practice to building for leads. You are much more likely to use someone you know for products or services, than someone you don’t know who randomly approaches you.

 

Business hours.

Local business hours on twitter are a great way to meet other local businesses and build up links between you. Working once again on relationship building, know that it’s not always about you! Business hours are a great time to promote others as well as yourself. You can also use this style of relationship building in LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups.

 

Utilise the search function.

Look for stuff. Sounds simple I know, but when was the last time you used the search function on your social media? Especially twitter where you can search a term and find people who are asking for that actual term. For example ‘can people manage my social media’ brings up a whole host of tweets that contain those words. Yes you have to search through those to see which actually qualify, but you may just connect with someone who is directly searching for your services.

 

Consistent posting.

You cannot expect to post once and gain leads from it. Social media serves as a reminder of your services, and if you’re not regularly posting, chances are people are not going to think of your name straight away. By consistently being there, not only do you reaffirm your presence, but you also build your credibility and reassure your audience that you know what you are talking about, and are someone they may want to work with.

 

Referrals.

Social media is a two way street, so you can’t expect people to refer you if you don’t refer others. If you use a great service, shout about it! The more you post about others, the more likely people will post about you. And once you start receiving referrals, your social reach becomes a lot bigger, leaving you open to a lot more traffic, and what is that traffic seeing? All nice lovely comments about you, making them much more likely to contact you.

 

Still struggling on being more social? We might be able to help, call us today on 01543 495752 to arrange to pop in for a cuppa. 

 

Social media tips for seasonal marketing

Social media tips for seasonal marketing

Social media tips for seasonal marketing

Social media can be hard to manage at the best of times. But throw in seasonal events, and more people using social networks, it can be hard to know where to start. How to get noticed, and how to make it work for you.

We have a few tips to get you organised, get your customers excited for your business and be able to repeat your success.

 

Start early, plan ahead

A lot of companies make the mistake with their social media, in thinking that you can throw up a few themed status’s before Halloween/bonfire night/Christmas, and the sales will come rolling in. Then when they don’t, it is declared that social media doesn’t work, and it is a waste of time.

Social Media is a brilliant tool. But it does need to be given careful planning for it to work. Take the time to create a content calendar. Which is not just selling your products, but contains useful information. And perhaps a little seasonal humour. Ease your customers into the season, and ensure they have a reason to keep looking out for your updates.

This planning can take a lot more time than you expect, so start planning early. If you use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, you can schedule some tweets in advance, keeping things nice and organised.

 

Create a seasonal brand image

Now we agree this doesn’t work for every company. But some businesses can benefit from creating a seasonal brand image.

As humans, when it begins to get to winter, we dress ourselves up in our wintery finery. As we get closer to Christmas, we dress our houses, our tree and anything we can get our hands on really.

Creating a seasonal brand image communicates that message that you are ready for Christmas (or Halloween or bonfire night). As it’s a different from the norm, it catches people’s eye. So if you have people scrolling through their twitter news feed, and you’ve updated your image, they would be more likely to stop and check your content, than if you kept the same image.

 

Run a Facebook competition

There is a lot going on in the run up to big seasonal events. So running a competition can give people a reason to engage more with your company. Plus it is always nice to reward your customers, just for being them.

Don’t be mistaken though, you can no longer run competitions to encourage people to like your page. But a competition is a great way to bring awareness to offers you are already running. Say for example, you run a cafe, and in the winter months you are offering a free hot drink with every bacon roll. You could run a competition for a free breakfast every week, if you check yourself in to the café. More customers come in, are happy they’ve received a free hot drink. They check in and share your business online, and more people see it. You can also share the ‘winners’ of the competition enjoying their breakfast, to get people to keep checking in for a chance to win.

 

Christmas Twitter Hashtag

You can do a similar thing to the Facebook competitions, but with a Twitter hashtag. The hashtag gives a seasonal feel to your social posts, and again encourages users to engage.

Hashtag’s are something that have become a bit more of a big deal in the last few years. Especially with some bigger companies focusing their whole campaigns around a hashtag. Which you can read about in our post about popular Christmas campaigns.

So take some time to discuss this and what would work for your business and what message you want to send this season.

 

Get customers sharing their hints and tips

Rather than having a company hashtag, you could create a customer based hashtag. One for them to share their best seasonal tips. Though you can do this as an additional too, and across all your social networks.

Pinterest, what’s the best homemade gifts? Facebook, when is okay to put up my Christmas decorations? Twitter, what makes the best hot chocolate? LinkedIn, when should you send out company Christmas cards? You can gain different styles of tips from different networks, and get people talking. Just be sure that this chatter is connected back to you and your company. Perhaps you can post a blog of the best tips each week? So customers compete to get their tips on the blog, and the blog attracts more people back to your site.

 

Measure your campaigns!

We started with saying plan ahead, and we’re ending with measure the campaign properly. If you would like to repeat any success, you need to know what worked well.

Ensure you regularly check which are your most popular and engaging posts. So you can update your current campaign to include more of what your customers interact with. Most social networks now include their own analytics. So you can see straight on the page what is going well.

Keep an eye out for which posts receive the most interaction, which links are most clicked, and what days and times are getting the most action.

If you use google analytics, it also means you can track how many visitors to your website came from your social media efforts.

All of this information is vital to produce another social media campaign, and also to see your return on your efforts.

Now you’re set for your social media for this season!

 

 

 

 

 

8 ways to increase your ranking on LinkedIn

how to increase your linkedin ranking header image

how to increase your linkedin ranking header image

Did you know that LinkedIn has a ranking system? Find out what you can do to boost your LinkedIn ranking and be found by more people.

LinkedIn is a valuable tool for making initial contact with prospects, but it can be hard to make sure what you are doing is worthwhile sometimes. Here’show The Marketing People can help you increase your linkedin ranking.

One of LinkedIn’s more recent features is a ranking system, which lets you see where you rank for profile views amongst your connections. As well as creating some competition and drive to regularly use LinkedIn, it also gives you an insight into how easy it actually is to find your profile. You can read in more detail about this feature in this blog by LinkedIn themselves.

8 Ways to increase your ranking on LinkedIn

Over the last 2 weeks I have improved my personal ranking by 25%. If you don’t know how to get the best out of LinkedIn, and don’t want to pay for premium, this is how I did it for free and you can too.

Find out more about your aims and goals you’re looking to achieve through your social media. Lets see where we may be able to help.

Find out how you rank on LinkedIn

Before we get started, let’s take a look at how you’re currently ranking.

8 ways to increase your ranking on LinkedIn

Log in to your LinkedIn account, and hover over ‘Profiles’ and click ‘Who’s Viewed Your Profile’. From that page click on the ’How you rank for profile views’ tab at the top of the page. Or if you are feeling really lazy, just click this link here to see how you rank.

You can then see how you rank amongst your connections, and see how your connections rank. If you have a free LinkedIn account, you can only see how the top 10 rank, and how you rank. If you have a Premium account, you will be able to see everything.

Now you know how you’re ranking, let’s look at 8 ways to increase your LinkedIn ranking.

Schedule posts to increase your LinkedIn ranking

Regular content is key. LinkedIn’s feed only allows a small portion of your updates to be seen. Around 20% supposedly. So the less you post, the less your connections see. The less your connections see, the less they will be inclined to click on your profile. Posting valuable and informative posts makes you a valuable connection, so consider this a priority.

Scheduling updates also means regular content that can be planned in advance. So if you don’t have the option to log in everyday you can spend a small amount of time planning ahead. Which saves you a lot of time, and hassle.

You can’t schedule updates directly from LinkedIn at the moment, but you can do it using a third-party application, such as Hootsuite or Buffer.

Re-connect with old connections

This isn’t quite the same as reconnecting with old friends on Facebook. With LinkedIn, and finding people you have previously working with, you may be able to work together collaboratively now.

Taking a look at their profile will probably mean they look back at your profile anyway. But being able to see from their profile if you are in an industry that is relevant to them now. Or even just that they have posted some great articles, or landed a new role is a great reason to reconnect.

In rankings terms, this could mean that once a notification has gone up on the feed that you two have connected, others may feel the need to view your profile too. Increasing your LinkedIn ranking has other benefits too, this could include a prospect opportunity, a referral, or just a nice catch up.

Welcome new connections

The main purpose of LinkedIn. To connect and work with others. But a lot of us are guilty of not really utilising this to the full. Or perhaps utilising this too much, and adding anyone and everyone.

New connections should be someone you know really. Continuing networking you have started in the real world, either face to face or over the phone. Make the jump to connect with them, and actually make conversation.

Again, the more people’s profiles you look at to ensure you know them, the more likely you are to receive a click back. Which in turn increases your ranking. So don’t be scared to properly view someones profile before you connect with them.

And always view as you, not as an anonymous viewer. Nobody appreciates it, and it will not help your ranking in the slightest.

Follow up from events

If you have attended an event, this is a brilliant opportunity to work with on social media in general. But especially LinkedIn.

Connect with and message those you met, or find the people they referred you to. Find those who posted about the event, or perhaps you saw their name in the networking or event list, but you didn’t get chance to meet.

You have a great opportunity to rapidly increase your rankings in a quick time due to the urgency of an event. Everyone will posts photos or register their attendance online, or will have a flurry of new connections. Get commenting, visiting profiles, and connecting with others to boost your ranking.

Interact with relevant posts

You don’t necessarily just need an event to comment on posts. There are a huge amount of opportunities on LinkedIn to interact with others.

Congratulate connections on new roles or work anniversaries. Congratulate that team who have posted that they are having a great week. Refer others if you see a post asking for help, and you know just the guy.

If you read pulse articles, take the time to write what you thought. You never know how many other people may agree with your point of view and want to connect. Or if you find a certain person’s posts are always valuable, ask to connect yourself. If they have influence, they may influence your ranking too.

If you want people to notice you, and visit your profile to increase your ranking on LinkedIn, you need to take the time to interact. Social media isn’t called social for no reason.

Talk/connect to those who view your profile  

What an opportunity to network! If you have a free LinkedIn account, you can see the five most recent people to view your profile in the past 90 days. If you have LinkedIn Premium, you can see everyone who has viewed your profile in last 90 days, unless they’ve chosen to turn that function off on their account. Which as we’ve said is not an ideal move when trying to rank.

Follow up with those who look at your profile and see if there is anything you can help them with. Even if it was an accidental visit, it shows you are proactive and, once again, begins the conversation between you and a potential prospect.

It also means they will probably view your profile once more. To remind themselves of who you are, and why they visited. More visits means better ranking. And if it’s also a potential lead that’s even better.

Update your profile to boost your linkedin rankings

Keeping your profile up to date means that your profile can provide viewers with relevant and current information about what you do, and who you work for. It also updates the main feed to say you have updated. This means that others will be inclined to check out your profile to see your updates.

More visits to your profile means more rankings. However, don’t take advantage of this tactic too much. If it appears you are updating your content everyday, others may not feel as inclined to click on it, rendering it worthless for improving your ranking.

Publish articles

Publishing articles is a relatively new feature for those on basic profiles, and it is a brilliant opportunity.

Publishing articles means you can attract people who may not normally see your profile. Through searches on LinkedIn’s Pulse feature, and others sharing your article, you can attract prospect to you who are relevant and interested. This is also a good way to build up trust with slow burning prospects by showing you have knowledge in your field.

Having a wider network of people viewing your work will encourage them to view your profile too, and maybe even connect. This is a huge opportunity to improve your ranking, and your connections too.

How to publish LinkedIn articles

Go to your LinkedIn home and click ‘Publish a post’ near the top of the page. This will bring up a new page where you can write your headline, write your article, and upload an image.

Keep your headline around 46 characters long, as it will get cut off in the sidebar if it is any longer. LinkedIn also recommend your image size is 700 x 400 pixels.

It may be a good idea as well to only part publish your article if it appears on your website too. So if people want to finish the article they can click the link to read it on your site. This means you still get your rankings up, but your website doesn’t miss out on traffic.

There are a lot of other ways to increase your presence on LinkedIn and to use it effectively, and this will change for each individual. These are just a few of the basic changes I made, that enabled me to see improvement.

What do you find helps increase your reach on LinkedIn? Have you tried any of our tips? Let us know in the comments.

 

If you want to read more tips for your social, take a look at our other social blogs. Or if you require a little more help with your company’s social, why not give our friendly team a call on 01543 495752 and take advantage of our free marketing consultation.

 


14 common social media mistakes and what to do instead

14 common social media mistakes and what to do instead

14 common social media mistakes and what to do instead

Social media allows businesses to reach and engage a huge part of their target audience and make a positive impression on them. But a business can just as easily make a poor impression on their audience which could prevent them from becoming customers.

Let’s look at 14 common social media mistakes and what you can do instead to build a positive brand image and reach and engage with your audience.

 

Thinking social media is a magic bullet

To be honest, we don’t entirely blame you for this. We have seen too many self-professed marketing and social media gurus lead businesses to believe that all they need to do is set up a Facebook or Twitter page, send out a few tweets, and the customers come flocking in. That’s not how it works at all.

If used correctly, with a marketing plan and strategy, social media can increase your reach, generate leads and customers, and keep your existing customers happy. But it’s not a straight forward or fast process. It takes time, and the main reason for that is that the way people buy has shifted significantly.

Think about your own buying habits 10 years ago. You probably went to a shop knowing what you wanted, and perhaps the specific model depending on what adverts you might have seen, and picked up what was on offer.

Now, the buyer journey looks something like this:

  • You have a problem or want
  • You do some research, and talk to some friends, and identify the kind of thing you need to resolve this want or problem
  • You do a bit more research; you carry out searches and begin looking at products
  • You do a bit more research; you look at product reviews, see what customers are saying on social media
  • You discover the brand’s social media pages and have a look at that, where you might follow an interesting looking link to a blog post
  • You do some more research; you look around websites, maybe look at some more reviews, and begin comparing options
  • You settle on what looks best for you in terms of your wants, the price, and reviews
  • You buy
  • You might choose to follow the brand on social media, keep up with their blog, sign up to their mailing list
  • Maybe you become a loyal customer

And that’s a fairly simplified buyer journey. There are so many variables that can affect the length of the journey, or exactly how someone ends up at your website.

The point of you using social media is to help your target audience and existing customers by providing them with useful content, interacting with them, and solving customer service issues.

 

Using social networks your target audience don’t use

There are so many social networks around, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to be on all of the popular ones but that’s not true at all. You should use social networks that your target audience use.

Using Facebook because everyone else uses it and it’s the most popular social network is a waste of time and money if your audience don’t use Facebook.

Carry out research and look at what social networks are most popular with your audience and use those, instead of guessing what networks your potential customers are using.

 

Not completing your profile

The first thing you should do when setting up social media profiles, is complete your profile.

Include a company bio, your address, phone number, email address, website, opening hours, and anything else your customers need to know.

It’s easy to forget to add your website to your Facebook page, for example, but it can be a huge help to people who discover your brand through Facebook.

Imagine you are an independent book shop (or any kind of business with a physical presence) and someone discovers you through Facebook. They want to pop in tomorrow and want to know your opening hours. They go to your info tab and they can’t see anything about your opening hours, contact details, or your web address. Feeling that if you can’t be bothered, they can’t either, they open up Amazon, or Waterstones, and you miss out on business.

 

Poor images on your profile

After completing your profile, you should upload high-quality images that are the right size.

All social networks have different sized images, which can be a pain to keep up with, but when the alternative is distorted and poor imagery, it’s worth it.

Visually have an extensive guide to social media image sizes that’s worth bookmarking for reference.

  • Make sure your images are clear and the right size
  • Use PNGs if you’re uploading images with text to Facebook
  • Apply consistent branding and style across all social networks you use

 

Not having a plan

Approaching social media with a spray and pray attitude won’t work.

Take the time to consider your audience, choose the right social networks to be on, set goals, and carefully think about the kind of content you will be producing for social media.

You can then use social media and monitor your efforts and adjust your efforts to see the best results.

 

Not tracking your results

As well as not having a plan, one of the biggest mistakes you can make on social media is failing to track your results.

Without looking at your results, your engagement, the number of visits social media is sending to your website, the number of leads and sales it’s creating, you don’t know whether or not what you’re doing is actually working.

If you track your results you can identify what is working and what isn’t working. You can then tweak the things that aren’t working to try and give you the results you’re looking for.

 

Automatically cross-posting to social networks

We get it, time is money and automatically cross-posting Facebook updates to Twitter will save you time. The only problem is, it looks scruffy and lazy.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters, which means that if you post a 160 character update to Facebook, it will get cut off on Twitter and will display a link to your Facebook page which people will have to follow to read the rest of the update.

Take the time to customise an update for each social network to make sure you’re getting the most out of it.

 

All you do is self-promote

Remember what we said earlier on about providing your customers with useful content? That’s what you should be doing on social media, not sending out a barrage of self-promotion.

It’s recommended that you stick to the 80 / 20 rule, where 20% of what you send out is self-promotional, while the other 80% isn’t.

“What on earth do I talk about then?” you might be asking:

  • Share news stories that relate or resonate with your audience
  • Share hints and tips for getting the best out of something that relates to your audience. E.g. if you’re a beauty brand, you might share tips for making lipstick last longer – it’s not a direct self-promotion, and it provides your audience with something useful
  • Ask questions – find out more about your audience and their likes

If all you do is self-promote, you’ll turn people off and you won’t be able to grow audience.

 

Paying for followers / believing it’s all about numbers

You don’t have to search too hard to find a website willing to sell you a few hundred or few thousand likes for not a huge amount.

The number of followers you have is irrelevant if they aren’t engaging with you. It’s pointless having 10,000 followers, if the majority of them are fake accounts or aren’t engaging with you.

It’s better to organically grow your audience by sharing useful content and engaging with them.

 

Self-promoting in relation to disasters

Newsjacking is when a brand creates content that relates to a popular topic at the time. It can work well and increase their reach as they’re talking about a topic that a lot of people are interested in.

Here are a few examples:

However, there is a time and a place.

During Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, brands came under fire for offering money off beauty products and clothing.

It is never going to go down well if you try to profit from a disaster.

 

Hashtag hijacking

While we’re talking about butting in, trying to create a tenuous link between a popular hashtag and your brand / products / services won’t make you very popular either.

Hashtags are useful for helping people discover other individuals and brands talking about a topic they’re interested in. They are not for stuffing your products under the nose of people talking about something popular but completely unrelated to your product.

Furniture brand Habitat offered up the perfect example of hashtag hijacking in 2009.

Habitat sent out a series of tweets using hashtags that were trending at the time to increase the reach of their tweets. The problem was they decided to use completely unrelated, and distasteful, hashtags such as: #iPhone, #Apple, #TrueBlood, and even decided to get in on the Iranian election hashtag #MOUSAVI.

Needless to say, they were quickly called out for their behaviour, and offered an apology a few days later.

 

Poor customer service

For many people, social media is as another customer service avenue; users often feel they will get a faster response if they complain on social media rather than if they called or emailed the company.

Customers expect a fast response, and to do this you need to set out some rules:

  • How fast will you aim to get back to people?
  • Who will be responsible for replying?
  • Have you got a customer complaints procedure in place?
  • How often will you monitor social media for comments?

If you have a plan in place, you will be well prepared in the event that someone makes a complaint or has a query.

Customer service doesn’t have to be negative. As it’s another opportunity to prove to your customer that they made the right decision in spending their money with you. When it happens publicly on social media, it can improve your brand reputation by showing your care about your customers. If you fail to respond, or offer poor customer service, it can have the opposite effect as people viewing your social media profiles will assume you don’t care about keeping customers happy.

 

Blanket responses

If you’re a business that carries out a lot of customer service on social media, it can be tempting to use blanket responses.

Customers don’t want to see a huge list of copy and pasted responses. It doesn’t make them feel like their concerns are being taken seriously at all.

Yes, it is faster to copy and paste a response. Especially if you’re a huge business that might even have a separate Twitter account for dealing with customer service. However, your customer service channels are an opportunity for you to delight your customers.

If a complaint, no matter how big or small, is dealt with well, you can actually make your customer feel happy about having chosen to spend their money with you. In turn, that can lead to recommendations because they recognise that you care about customers and making them happy even after they have purchased.

Review each tweet and try to personalise it in some way:

  • Include the user’s name
  • Acknowledge their problem
  • Tell them who to contact, or ask further questions

The British Gas Help (@BritishGasHelp) Twitter team do a great job of responding to customers by personalising each response.

They use the person’s name, they acknowledge the problem, their responses are helpful. They create a sense of accountability by signing off each tweet with the name of the person responding.

British Gas Twitter customer service screenshot

Their responses come across as friendly, helpful, and positive. If you wanted to contact British Gas via Twitter and saw their feed, it would probably give you hope that your issue would be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

 

Ignoring negative comments entirely

It might seem easier to bury your head in the sand and ignore a negative comment. Especially if the problem is due to a mistake your business has made. While it might be easier for you, all it will do is frustrate the person who is complaining further and could damage your brand as they may tell people not to use you because of your poor customer service.

If you haven’t got a social media strategy in place yet, take a look at our blog post on creating a social media strategy that works. 
Or if you need a helping hand with you social media, why not take a look at our social media services?

 

6 tips to help you get more out of LinkedIn

6-tips-help-you-get-more-out-of-linkedin

6-tips-help-you-get-more-out-of-linkedin

So you set up your LinkedIn profile with the hope of increasing your professional network. Which was lovely for the first 6 months, until the novelty wore off. You didn’t have time to check it and it became more like Facebook than LinkedIn.

This similarity to Facebook seems to be the bane of every LinkedIn member. Especially the fact that not every single post is professionally centred. In have crept the funny pictures, riddles, and motivational quotes. I bet your feed is full of them right now. Things like “Coca cola only sold 25 bottles in their first year, keep at it”. Or if you’re like me and have a lot of recruiters, you have meme after meme of Wolf of Wall Street.

So is it just really annoying or a clever ploy?

LinkedIn isn’t Facebook. They do have two completely different purposes. But Facebook style posts normally get more likes, shares, and comments.

Why? Because they are more relatable posts. In an ideal world, everyone would just post about their business. But unfortunately, that doesn’t connect you with everyone in an instant. Posting a cute dog picture with “Thank God it’s Friday”, relates to a lot more people. Will more than likely gain a quick smile at their computer and a like on your post. More than why your business is better than your competitors.

Only around 20% of connections see what you post, which can be a little disheartening. But for every like, comment or share from someone, it appears to around 20% of their connections too. Maybe the sharing of pictures is becoming a little more tempting?

So is it worth the Facebook style post on your professional profile? That’s up to you. And what your connections and prospects interact well with. However if you are posting regular content (like you should be), the odd “fun” post, should just add variety to what you’re putting out there.

So now we have put the LinkedIn or Facebook debate to rest. What ridiculously simple things could you do today, that would make LinkedIn work better for you?

 

Make sure your profile is up to date and relevant

This can sound too simple, but the easiest way to ensure you do business with the right people, is ensuring your profile is up to date with what you are doing as a company. A lot of people don’t take the time to update their profile if they are not job hunting. However having descriptions about what you do as a company and in your role specifically, can make you more searchable for people looking for your services.

 

Always communicate with those you are linked to

This can be a hard one to keep up with, but ensure you comment on others updates, articles and forums. The whole purpose of LinkedIn is to connect with people. So make the most of those connections!

 

Share posts and get posts shared

Only around 20% of connections see your posts. The more it is liked, commented on and shared, the more people see it. On this basis, you need to ensure the content you are posting is well thought out and valued enough to be shared.

 

Welcome messages

Message every new connection you have. This can be really hard to manage. But ensures you make the most of the opportunity that is there with the first contact. If you get it right, this can leave a great lasting first impression, which makes it easier to network online.

 

Recommendations rather than endorsements

Endorsements, though a lovely feeling, effectively mean nothing now. I don’t know about you, but brand new connections I have not even worked with yet, will endorse me for 10 skills at a time. The real ones from actual clients are lost within the sea of “endorsements for return endorsements”. Recommendations are hard to dismiss as not only is it from an actual person, but they have taken the time to write about you.

 

Using scheduling tools to ensure regular content

Regular posting is essential for keeping your name out there on LinkedIn, but can eat into a large portion of your day. Using scheduling programmes such as Hootsuite to plan out some posts, can enable you to only spend a small amount of your working day on LinkedIn.

 

Looking to get more views on your LinkedIn profile? We have 8 ways to increase your LinkedIn ranking without spending a penny.

If you need a bit more guidance when it comes to social media, why not take a look at the social services we offer?

How to create a social media strategy that works

Social media marketing consultancy meeting

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There seems to be a misconception that social media is easy. That all you have to do is update your status a few times and the leads come flooding in. But that’s not how it works.

As with any marketing activity, you need to know what you want to achieve so you can figure out how to get there.

 

Why you need to develop a social media marketing strategy

You’ve probably been told that you need to be on Facebook, or you need to be on Instagram. Whether you’re a small or a large business, you probably don’t have the time or resources to be on every social network. So you need a strategy to help you find out which networks your audience use.

Strategy helps you identify and understand exactly what you want out of social media. It allows you to plan how to get that ROI. Once you begin using social media, you can frequently review your activities and tweak things to get more out of it.

As we’ve already mentioned, you won’t get the ROI you’re looking for if you go into social media with a ‘spray and pray’ attitude. To reach your goals, you need a solid social media marketing strategy.

 

How to develop a social media marketing strategy

1. Set your goals – what do you want out of social marketing?

The first thing you need to do is identify the aim of using social media. Your goals will be unique to your business. But try to make them as specific as possible and set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound). To make sure you’re setting solid and achievable goals.

A few examples of social media goals may be:

  • Increase revenue by 20%
  • Gain 10 leads per month from social media
  • Get 50 sales on a specific product or service from social media
  • Increase visits on your website by 30%

 

2. Research – where are your audience?

As we touched on above, you’ve probably read or been told that you must be on a certain social network, but that isn’t always true. To use Facebook because you “have to be on Facebook” is a waste of your time and resources if your audience don’t actually use Facebook.

To look at where your audience are, you will need a good idea of who your target audience and customers are. To find out what social networks they are using you can:

  • Ask your existing customers
  • Do some research – you can find research and studies which look at what kinds of people use which social network
  • Look at your competitors and see where they are performing well

You may find that your audience use lots of social networks. Which means you will need to evaluate which networks are going to work best for you. There’s only so much guesswork you can do without actually trying a social network. Remember that what works for you may not always work for your competitors and vice versa.

 

3. What’s your strategy?

By this stage you know what ROI you want from social media and you know which social networks you should be using. The next step is to work out what you need to do to reach your goal. This is where strategy comes in.

For example: you run a wedding stationery design company and your goal is to get 15 leads a month from social media. Your strategy might be to use Pinterest and Twitter to target engaged men and women, though mostly women, in the UK.

 

4. Tactics – the who, what, where and when

Once you know what the big picture is, you can drilldown to the specifics of exactly what you will do to reach your goal.

No matter which social network you are using, you will need to start off by doing basic things like:

  • Set up your profile and claim your vanity URL where possible
  • Fill in ALL contact information
  • Upload branded images
  • Add link to social network on your website

What comes next will depend on what network you’re using and what you want out of it, so you need to look at:

  • How often you will post
  • When you will post – this is particularly important if you’re appealing to audiences in multiple time zones
  • What type of content should you be sharing
  • What type of content do you need to produce yourself
  • Your tone of voice
  • When will you have time to manage social media
  • How will you monitor your goals
  • How will you handle any complaints?

Go into as much detail here as possible, because it will be really useful when you start using social media.

What could this look like?

If we stick with the example of a wedding stationery business, their tactics may look like this:

Twitter: we will tweet at least six times per day (ranging from 09:00 – 19:00) and share things that relate to weddings, interesting or funny examples of wedding stationery, our customer testimonials, examples of our work, share ‘behind the scenes’ photos of our processes, answer questions and respond to any engagement.

To generate leads on Twitter, we will search for people talking about wedding stationery who are based in the UK and tweet them.

We will need to make sure we take more photos of our processes, finished work and work in situ, where possible. We could also create images or videos of customer testimonials.

Our tone of voice will be helpful and friendly.

 

5. Monitoring & reviewing – don’t keep doing something that isn’t working

You should regularly review what you’re doing and the results of your social media efforts. It’s a waste of your time (time is money) and effort to keep doing something which isn’t working.

Sticking with the example above; let’s imagine the wedding stationery business has been using Twitter for two months and have generated 15 leads in total, instead of 30.

Of course you won’t see results instantly, but you need to review what you’re doing.

  • Are you using social media as often as you planned to?
  • Have you come across any issues?
  • What kind of content are you sharing?
  • Are you responding to engagement?
  • Are you self-promoting too much?
  • Is your tone of voice wrong?

Your competitors

As well as reviewing your own efforts, it’s worth knowing what your competitors are up to. Keeping an eye on their social media efforts can give you an idea of what does and doesn’t work with your audience.

If they’re finding something in particular creates a lot of engagement, look at why and what you could do to create similar kinds of engagement. As well as reviewing their strong points, look at their weaknesses too and what you would do to improve on them.

Your tactics may change as you use social media and review your efforts, but your strategy should remain the same.

We help lots of our clients develop a social media strategies which benefit their business. Get in touch to find out how we can help you develop a social media strategy that helps you reach your goals.