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How do I use Social Media Analytics?

Posted on 29th March 2016 by The Marketing People

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.

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?

Posted on 22nd March 2016 by The Marketing People

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?

Posted on 15th March 2016 by The Marketing People

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.

14 common social media mistakes and what to do instead

Posted on 9th July 2015 by The Marketing People

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.

#SocialMediaTip: Social media is not a magic bullet. Success takes time and hard work.

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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.

#SocialMediaTip: Make sure you know what social networks your audience are using.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: 100% complete your social media profiles to help your audience.

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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

#SocialMediaTips: Make sure your images are the right size, and are clear.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Create a social media plan to make sure your social media efforts help you reach your goals.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Track your social media efforts to find out if what you’re doing is working.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Don’t auto-post Twitter and Facebook updates.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Don’t just talk about your business. Share useful content, and engage with your audience.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Don’t buy followers. Grow your audience organically by engaging with them and helping them.

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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:

Cox Blue: What HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ can teach you about marketing your business
Elite Daily: The 10 lessons ‘Breaking Bad taught us about running a business
Marketing Profs: Five marketing lessons from Taylor Swift
Inc: What Katy Perry’s business success can teach you about customers

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.

#SocialMediaTips: Newsjacking can work well, but never promote your brand in relation to a disaster.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Use hashtags related to your sector, don’t be tempted to hijack irrelevant popular hashtags.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Customers expect customer service on social media now. Make sure you have a plan in place.

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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.

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.

#SocialMediaTips: Create personalised responses to any complaints. Don’t copy and paste a blanket response.

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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.

#SocialMediaTips: Deal with negative comments and complaints. Don’t bury your head and ignore it.

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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

Posted on 25th June 2015 by The Marketing People

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.

6 tips to help you get more out of LinkedIn and generate leads.

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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?

Barking in the boardroom; it’s a dogs life!

Posted on 19th September 2013 by The Marketing People

Bonjour et nihao Humans,

I don’t know about you, but we’ve had a busy day today; Gareth, Lauren and Laura from Morgan Signs & Design have been in talking about digital marketing and social media.

Our good furiends at Morgan Signs & Design design manufacture, install, maintain and renovate signs for pubs, restaurants, hotels, shops, businesses and more. (Which reminds us, we must send Gareth an email asking if he can create us a sign for the kitchen saying ‘No Cats Allowed’, that’s our bedroom cats!)

The humans had a chat with them about how they could help them with their digital and printed marketing material and are now looking into creating both printed and digital brochures and newsletters fur them.

For those of you who don’t remember the great print is dead debate of 2012, both of us have strong feelings towards print and digital. Chops favours printed marketing material, while I prefer digital marketing material so I can view it on my iBone.

Being furry and clued up, once the conversation moved to social media we were able to take ofur and talk to them about how social media could help their business.

A couple of weeks ago we created a LinkedIn Company Page for Morgan Signs & Design and after todays bark, we are planning to design, develop and build a blog which is integrated into their existing website and help them manage their blog.

Of course, when we say we’re going to do it, we mean we’re going to delegate the task to the Humans and take up a supervisory role.

Once we’d set them straight on social media, things got more serious as we turned to the topic of office pets.

We’ve been told that they have an office goldfish (zzzzzz) and Lauren and Laura feel they need something a bit furrier and woofier in the office.

We sat Gareth down and had a furry serious conversation with him about the benefits of office dogs. In fact, that’s what we’re doing in the picture above; we put on our best puppy dog eyes, tried our best to stop moulting for a minute and looked adorable.

It was lovely to meet Gareth, Lauren and Laura and we would like to extend our paws and them them for their time and the tasty treats and hope they got something out of it, other than dog slobber and fur. We look paward, oops forward, to seeing them soon and there better be a dog in tow next time!

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to snore very loudly.

Love and licks,
George & Chops

P.S Gareth, when you get your office dog, you can bring him or her to us for office dog training where we will be able to teach your new recruit how to;
– Snore all day
– Bark at the postman
– Empty the dustbins
– Ride chairs
– Clean up leftover lunch

Best of all, it will only cost you a chewy bone…each.

Is Using Social Media Risky for My Business?

Posted on 27th August 2013 by The Marketing People

Exactly how risky is it to use social media to brand and to boost your business profits? This all depends on how much you know, how much you’re prepared to do, and how quickly you can step in front of a crisis before it ends up spinning out of control.

Yes, there are many different risks associated with social media marketing. However, it’s important to realize that there are risks inherent in all types of marketing and in life in general. You can’t spend your time hiding from them.

Learn about the risks associated with social media for preparation purposes, but don’t let them scare you away from using social media as a tool to grow your business.

The Risks You Face when Operating a Social Campaign

1: The Risk of a Viral Disaster

One negative comment turns into a shared comment with a friend, who then spreads it around their network, and things start to spiral out of control in front of your eyes. You can get out in front of small disasters, but there’s a risk in social media of a full-blown viral crisis. It’s rare if you’re serious about quality control, but the risk is present nonetheless.

To prevent these potential viral disasters, you could implement some savvy steps into your branding.

Always apologize for any inconvenience, even if you’re not in the wrong
Reply to every legitimate criticism, even if it’s really negative
Try and quash bad situations with discounts and freebies if you can
Never ignore anyone
Be open and honest in your communications
Create guidelines for the process and have an avenue for people to contact you

2: The Risk of Poor Performance

You could hire a social media marketing consultant, read a ton of literature, have all the right programs, and still end up performing poorly in some areas. There is no guarantee of success in social marketing, and the inherent risk of failing in any area is always something that looms over everyone’s head. This risk should motivate you to try harder to succeed, of course, but the risk never goes away.

You’re constantly at risk of poor performance, and thus you may need some motivating factors. Try these tips to avoid putting your worst foot forward.

Run every post through a quality-control leg before launching
Split-test every ad to see which performs the best and where it performs the best
Never accept outsourced material unless you thoroughly go over it
Realize that a poor social media performance could cripple your brand image
Heavily scrutinize those you hire and those you have working on social campaigns
Try to outdo your previous performances with each new performance

3: The Risk of Wasted Money

Even though social media presents a low-cost form of advertising, you’re still going to spend a pretty penny to ensure that you’re targeting a lot of people on a site like Facebook. There’s always a risk of not properly assessing your market and spending money on ads that don’t attract people. Understanding this risk should make you more willing to research and target correctly before creating and launching material.

There are many different ways to waste your money in a social media campaign, from buying unnecessary add-ons to hiring people to put together simple posts that you should be able to handle.

Start off with cheaper approaches and build up
Research the rates for ads and the suspected reach they could bring
Never spend money on unneeded courses and coaches and the like
Invest in a solid ad-management app to get your money’s worth
Avoid outsourcing or hiring new people unless you cannot do the work yourself

4: The Risk of Being Hacked

Yes, hackers are prowling around social media sites in large numbers, just waiting to pounce on exposed information. They’re sending out malware in an abundance of links, and some unlucky few find out the hard way that they shouldn’t have clicked. The risks of being hacked are real in social media, and you need to be aware of them.

If you want to limit your risks of being hacked, here are a few measures you can take to keep you safe.

Use a different Facebook email than your actual business email
Never give out your main email address to people
Make sure your main website has a great security suite
Avoid giving out personal information of any kind
Change your password every few months just in case
Create complicated passwords: I4_aJZ$_mNo, rather than Qwerty or asdfjkl;
Never click on links that you don’t recognize

5: The Risk of a Dead Market

If you think you’re the only brand operating within a certain niche, you need to quickly come back to reality for a visit. There is ample competition in nearly every conceivable niche, and the things you’re trying, no matter how original, aren’t exactly going to break new ground. So there is a risk that you’ll run into dead tactics, where the audience is immune, or even a dead market, where the audience is tapped out.

How do you avoid running into these dead markets? For starters, you can try:

Thoroughly researching the market before you decide to target it
Sending out feeler posts and ads to measure your response
Testing multiple demographics to see which is the most vibrant
Changing your approach and consistently testing new demos within the market
Researching what your competitors are putting out there
Trying new tactics for engagement that haven’t been done to death
Avoiding flooded markets and looking for smaller niches and subsets

6: The Risk of an Unprofessional Image

Brands successful at social media management understand that letting a personality develop is important for the context of a social atmosphere. However, there’s always a risk here inherent in this humanization of a business. You run the risk of coming across as unprofessional – an amateurish business that doesn’t command the proper amount of respect.

You don’t have to present a suit-and-tie Wall-Street-like image, but you also can’t risk presenting a devil-may-care, unprofessional image. Here are some things to avoid to ensure your image stays respectable.

Don’t get into those vitriolic, profanity-riddled social troll debates
Keep your personal life personal
Don’t post material that’s offensive to anyone
Be careful with what you think is “humor”; it might not be funny to some
Keep your grammar clean and to the point
Don’t mix your brand’s image with a personal social account

7: The Risk of Upsetting the Balance

A lot of brands fear that the balance of harmony in social media is delicate and that everyone’s just happy, holding hands and singing songs. Then along come an offensive post or a harmful word and the whole world crumbles into chaos! Well, this is a sensationalized version, obviously, but there is a risk of offending people when you advertise so often. This is just one of those risks you have to accept.

As touched on above, you want to avoid posting anything that could be deemed offensive, but what does that entail? Here are some specific topics you should try to avoid, unless they’re explicitly a part of your niche.

Avoid topics about any religion or religious people
Try to stay out of politics, as in choosing a side
Stay away from topics of anything gender-based
Avoid speaking about sexuality, or even sex in general
Don’t alienate audiences with issues of class
Keep your material specific to your niche and noncontroversial

As you begin to learn more about social media advertising, you’re inevitably going to find that there are many more risks out there that you have to focus on. The risks listed above are just the most common risks that you’ll have to focus on. Under the umbrella of these risk types, you’ll find a slew of other potentially harmful risks. The key is to learn what you can to prevent them. Be proactive as well as reactive.

Craig Robinson, an online writer for Qwaya, a facebook ad campaign tool. He loves to write different topics about social media tips and strategies. Besides writing, he also enjoys engaging with different communities and social forums. Do follow him in twitter, Craig_Qwaya

How To Use Social Media For Customer Support.

Posted on 31st May 2012 by The Marketing People

As more and more companies take to social networking sites. More and more customers are realising that they’ll receive a faster response by reporting an issue on a social network rather than calling or emailing them.

Complaints are much more common on Twitter than Facebook. Possibly because the fast moving nature of Twitter means you’ll get a swift response and the ease of typing out a quick complaint and just tagging a company in it.

Some companies understand this and have realised that they can utilise Twitter for customer support. Some even have a separate customer support Twitter profile; such as Twitter themselves, Microsoft , Netflix and UPS.

If your customers are complaining or reporting problems to you via social networking sites, you need to be able to handle them. And respond in the correct way to avoid a PR disaster.

So how do you deal with customer complaints on a social network?

Look for them.

This probably sounds daft, why would you go out of your way to look for a complaint? If you care about your customers, you’ll want to help them as much as possible and you won’t want to leave a complaint unresolved.

Monitor your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and any other social networks you’re on for complaints. You can also search for your brand on social networks to see if there are any negative comments mentioning your brand.

If you work for a hospitality business, you’ll also want to keep an eye on websites like Trip Advisor or Yelp.

Create a policy.

You should create a policy which details. How you will deal with a complaint, what you will do to try and rectify the problem and who will deal with the customers problem.

This is really important and will help you handle any issues in a way that maintains your brand image and tone of voice correctly. If it’s dealt with an inappropriate way, it will be remembered and could do your brand some damage.

Don’t delete it or ignore it.

Unless it’s abusive or offensive, don’t delete the comment, even if you fully intend on dealing with the complaint.

Deleting a complaint makes you look as if you’re shying away from a problem and not willing to listen to or support customers after they’ve made a purchase.
It will only anger the person who complained and make them post further complaints.

If a person has taken the time to calmly explain their problem or why they’re unhappy. You should have the courtesy to reply.

Dealing with it.

Reply to a complaint quickly. The chances are a customer has complained on a social network because they think it will be faster than calling or emailing you. The more you make them wait, the more annoyed they will become.

Keep your response professional and be as helpful as possible. At the same time though, remember to come across as human, so show some emotion. You probably know yourself how frustrating it is when you speak to someone from customer service. Especially if their responses sound automated and like they’re being read off a sheet.

You may choose to deal with the complaint openly or in private. In the case of the latter, respond to the complaint publicly and tell them that you’ve acknowledged their problem. That you’ll be in contact with them or give them a number or email address to contact you on. This shows everyone who sees the complaint that you aren’t ignoring the comment and you are dealing with it.

Remember that a customer who has complained is not automatically a lost customer. You can still win them over if you deal with an issue correctly.

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.

Remember you can find us on facebook, twitter, pinterest and google+ for all our latest social media updates. Or if you feel you may need a little advice with your own social media, whether that’s getting started, or refreshing your knowledge, give us a call on 01543 495752 for a no obligation chat.

Is Your Business Facebook Page Set Up Correctly?

Posted on 12th March 2012 by The Marketing People

Facebook Timeline will be implemented on all Facebook Pages by the end of the month; are you ready? Have you got it right?

A business needs to be set up on Facebook as a Facebook Business Page and not a Profile.
Personal Profiles can be ‘friended’ and are for personal use, Facebook Pages can be ‘liked’ and are for businesses.

Some businesses may have been set up incorrectly as a Profile for a number of reasons; such as Pages hadn’t been implemented when the Profile was set up, or you may have simple just created it wrong by accident.

You’ll be happy to know that you can convert your Profile to a Page, without losing your friends. Any friends associated with the Profile will be converted to ‘Likes’.

There are several advantages to taking the leap and converting your Profile into a Page, especially now that Facebook Pages have been spruced up;

At the moment Facebook Timeline for Pages is optional, however on the 30^th March all Pages will switch to timeline whether you’re ready or not.

Recently we converted a Facebook Profile into a Facebook Page for Gardening Delights and redesigned their page in the process.

With the end of the month approaching fast, what better time is there to get your business set up correctly on Facebook?

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.

If you want your Facebook Profile converting into a Page and/or want your Page redesigning before timeline comes in, call us on 01543 495752 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com to see how we can help you.

Why should my business be using social media?

Posted on 17th February 2012 by The Marketing People

As Social Media week draws to a close, it only seemed natural to talk about why you and your company should be using social media.

The idea of using social media to help promote a business may seem like an alien idea to some, Facebook’s for telling people about what you did at the weekend not promoting your products, right? Wrong, here’s why.

To put things into perspective, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country on the planet, behind China and India. With over 483 million daily users at the end of 2011, you have a huge audience at your fingertips.

It’s not just Facebook you need to consider, there are other social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Google+, all of which allow you to reach a much wider audience.

As well as keeping in touch with your customers, it allows people to gather information about your company quickly and easily.
The widths of phone directories are getting smaller and smaller each year and people are turning to social media and the internet to get the information they need about businesses and their products and services.

Social media is great for showing off your products, services and any recommendations your company has received, giving you the ability to entice potential customers and keep current customers coming back for more.

Whether you like the smell of it or not, Old Spice is an example of a brand who really knows how to make the best of social media, many of their videos have gone viral as a result of social media.

You can use social media to increase the traffic to your website or blog, by providing your readers with a call to action. An increase in traffic to your website or blog can lead to an increase in sales.

For example, we published a blog post on the SEO advantages of blogging the other day. We used Twitter and Facebook to encourage people to read it by giving them a call to action by asking if they wanted to know what the advantages were and then providing a link to the blog.
With people of all ages on social media, the chances are your target audience is already using social networks.

Remember that social media success doesn’t just happen over night, like everything else you need to put hard work in to get results.

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.