Tracking Engagement – More than just likes!

April 3, 2024 admin Leave a comment

How well is your audience interacting with your content? The answer to this question will separate the novice social media promoters with the pros. The good news is, it doesn’t take 10,000 hours to become a pro in tracking your engagement. Use social media engagement metrics to enable a deeper understanding of what motivates your audience, and to determine how well your campaign is resonating with high-value readers and listeners.

Because there are so many engagement metrics to track, chances are that if you are a beginner to social media, with enough practice you will begin to see yourself as a winner in at least one of these metrics. With one win at a time, especially in the early days, you can find further motivation to keep tracking and keep improving your scores over time.

Here are some common engagement metrics with a description as to how you can benefit from them.

Likes

The most basic of all, and the higher number the better
What They Indicate: Likes and reactions (such as “love,” “wow,” “sad,” etc.) indicates a positive (or negative) reaction. More complex or sophisticated applications enable the audience to choose more than just a like, but also emojis for “love,” “wow,” and “sad” among others. It is the easiest and most rudimentary way a viewer can react, so not having any “likes” is like putting your audience to sleep.
What to Learn: Content with many likes and reactions lets you know which types of content get the most attention, and with that, you have a basis for replication of future content generation.

Comments

A deeper form of engagement, where the audience is so strongly interested in your posting that they set themselves apart (to show that you have their attention?) by creating new original content in response to your new original content.
What They Indicate: Comments show that your posting sparked interest. Even if you get trolls, you can have the satisfaction that someone bothered to post some nonsense, because they thought their own version of bad taste would be seen by others.
What to Learn: Read the comments and comment back – that is the most effective way to show users that you care about them and want to learn from them. With a deeper understanding of their sentiments made available through comments and feedback, you can use that to generate more meaningful content in the future, and in doing so, begin the virtuous cycle of interest among your readers, reflected by the interest you have shown them.

Shares and Retweets

Shares and retweets are likes and comments, but turned up a notch. Shares can amplify your reach and introduce your platform to new potential followers.
What They Indicate: More than just a comment, a share indicates that your audience is identifying themselves with you. A share of a posting means you have become and identity-maker. This step is a giant leap towards a full-on branding strategy.
What to Learn: As always, count the shares to see which comments resonate most you’re your audience. Go a step further and analyze what type of messaging, visuals, or information prompted users to share.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your post. Are you getting any genuine action from your audience? What percentage of your audience is entering your universe?
What It Indicates: CTR shows the effectiveness of your call-to-action.
What to Learn: A high CTR indicates that your content was compelling enough to drive traffic. Analyze the content and its placement to understand what encouraged users to click through. As with any indicator of success, adjust your content strategy based on these findings.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is a combination of likes, comments, shares, and clicks relative to your total number of followers.
What It Indicates: While it is one thing to have likes, if you are reaching the next level in your engagement effectiveness, you will come to learn that certain customers (or readers, or viewers) will be engaging with you more than once and in multiple ways. This is your bullseye target audience. All the lessons you aim to learn from simple metrics such as clicks and likes are now compounded in complexity and, along with that, potential benefits to your future promotional designs.
What to Learn: Similar to the other metrics, you can compare the engagement rates of different posts to identify which types of content perform better. Beyond that, you can begin to piece together certain character traits of your audience. “People who wrote these types of comments also had a higher CTR, therefore that is the kind of person I’m trying to appeal to.” Write your own version of that sentence, but with specifics to show for it.

Mentions and Tags

Being mentioned or tagged by users means they’re actively involving your brand in their conversations or content.
What They Indicate: This metric tracking indicates an advanced level of identity on the part of your audience, and may indicate that your audience as a whole is growing more sophisticated. Your reach is now extending beyond simple impressions or single individuals, you are being remembered in other peoples’ conversations.
What to Learn: Monitor mentions to identify opportunities for engagement. Respond to mentions promptly, whether they’re positive or negative, as de facto feedback on your brand, your product, your service and your message. Target new groups that were not previously on your radar. Learn from the type of people who mention your brand, and look out for potential surprises – audience types which resonate with your messaging, but you didn’t expect. What is making them interested? Acknowledging and engaging with user-generated content can build and foster a greater sense of community around your brand.

Follower Growth Rate

Follower growth rate measures how quickly your follower count is increasing.
What It Indicates: a metric for more well-developed and mature campaigns, it is another dimension of likes (which could gradually increase over time) and the audience’s enthusiasm over your content (how many likes in a short period of time).
What to Learn: If your campaign coincides with a significant increase in followers, analyze the content you posted during that period. Determine if there’s a correlation between the campaign content and the growth in followers, and if your determination is that there is a positive relationship, then push that theme like crazy. At some point, you may experience the thrill of a single posting that, at least in a small way, has gone viral. You may not be able to replicate this phenomenon on a weekly basis (but you can try), nonetheless, learn what you can and try to identify the ideas you conveyed which so well resonated with your audience.

Time of Engagement

Analyze when your posts receive the most engagement by studying time-of-day and day-of-week patterns.
What It Indicates: This is a tactic for the pros, but essential when your promotional efforts are building a large following. At this stage in the game, you will be trying to improve your skills not by factors of 5 or 10, but by 10% or 20%. When you have a large audience, a mere few percentage points can make a significant difference in the volume of revenue (and profit) that you take in from a single post.
What to Learn: Let every word be leveraged to is max! Optimize your posting schedule and tailor your content to be available when your audience is most open to your messaging.

By closely monitoring and analyzing these engagement metrics, you can gain valuable insights into what content resonates with your audience, which strategies are effective, and how to improve your future social media campaigns. Adjust your approach based on what you learn to continually refine and optimize your social media marketing efforts.

The Fun Part – Analyzing Your Success

November 27, 2023 admin Leave a comment

Analyzing the success of your social media campaign is a key step in increasing your audience over time. It gives you the chance – and the information you need – to improve, enhance and refine your messaging. Your audience is your best resource for knowing what worked well and what didn’t work well. This gold mine of information is being given to you freely by your audience, and with a little sweat equity added to the data (ie., your own effort in pulling out lessons to be learned), you can effectively identifying areas for improvement in your promotional processes, and ultimately, to your overall objectives.

This article highlights some key metrics and methods you can use to help differentiate yourself and maximize your promotional time and effort.

Capture Basic Engagement Metrics

The most basic way to begin is by tracking Likes, Shares, and Comments. These metrics indicate how well your content resonated with your audience, with increasing importance for each. Higher engagement suggests that your content is interesting and relevant. Even if you get trolls (who can say some very unfortunate things), that can be seen as a hallmark of your success in reaching a wide audience of people you don’t know, or didn’t know before (because for sure, you don’t have any friends who would make nasty trolling comments!).
Click-Through Rate (CTR): It’s not just about getting Likes, but also attracting people to your online world. Measure the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your post. A higher CTR indicates that your content was compelling enough to drive traffic to your platform or commercial offer. What is a typical CTR to expect? Around 1 or 2%. Spam email may get one-tenth of that. Nonetheless, with an engaging campaign message and a focus on personalized attention to your audience, you can effectively increase these metrics and generate a small volume of high-value customers (more about this in future articles).

Focus on Reach and Impressions

Your social media reach is the number of unique users who saw your content. It shows how effectively your content is being distributed to a broad audience – as opposed to how many individuals will click your content, which is conveyed by…
Impressions, which is the total number of times your content was displayed. It gives you an idea of the overall exposure your campaign received.

Track a Steady Growth of Followers

Monitor the growth in your social media followers. This metric is especially important if you are undertaking a planned social media campaign that may be coordinated across several different platforms or accounts.
Everyone aspires to the “viral posting” that gets distributed to millions of people. If that happens, enjoy the great success, but consider it a bonus. Keep the consistency going, because that is what pays off in the long run.
Clicks to website is also key to measure how many users clicked through your social media to visit your website. This information will be the basis for you to…

Monitor Conversions

If your promotional goal is to drive specific actions (e.g., sign-ups, purchases), you will be able to track the percentage of users who completed the targeted action as a percentage of the CTR/impressions, giving you an indication of your messaging effectiveness. This metric also forms the basis of more sophisticated analysis, and enables you to undertake A/B analysis (later in this article).

Referral Traffic

Where posting on social media may be a direct way to reach your audience, referrals will be crucial to helping you build that audience. Website analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) will be needed to enable tracking of the amount of traffic coming from your social media channels.

Hashtag Performance

Hashtags are an easy and effective way to extend your reach. Track these as their own category. Know your hashtags and those of your audience. Test different ones to see their impact. Hashtags with a large volume of users are not necessarily better. Aim for the niche.

Time and Day Analysis

Analyze when your posts received the most engagement. This can help you optimize your posting schedule for future campaigns. (Another upcoming topic: how to determine a good time for posting)

Audience Demographics

Understand the demographics of the users who engaged with your campaign. Not to generalize or stereotype, but your content will attract people with similar traits and characteristics. These may be demographic in nature, or otherwise, you can identify activity or personality-based characteristics. Look for surprises, ie., people you didn’t expect would be interested in your content, then understand why they are interested. This type of analysis can open up a whole new world of possibilities for content and monetizable offers, particularly if you have found an active niche, where you are filling a gap in demand that nobody else has found.

Sentiment Analysis

Understanding sentiment takes your audience analysis a step further than mere demographics. While the data is essential, the art will be in generating a storyline about why your audience feels the way they do.
How to monitor sentiment itself is an art. Analyze the types of comments that people make, and the way people say things. It is a more subtle and subjective analysis, but over time and with enough data points, you will begin to recognize patterns in mood and feeling among your audience. Have you hit a sore spot with the audience? Is there a problem they are expressing, that you can solve? Are they excited or motivated by what you say? These questions are the nuts and bolts of a sentiment analysis, and understanding the answers can help to open new possibilities for marketing and monetization.

ROI (Return on Investment)

Go as far as you can with free promotional strategies. If you are tired of waiting for organic results, then lay down your credit card and give your account a boost. If you had a budget for the campaign, measure the ROI by comparing the costs incurred with the benefits generated, such as increased sales, leads, or brand exposure. No need for advanced math skills, just divide profit over cost.

A/B Testing

For advanced promotional strategies, A/B testing is absolutely essential. How do you know what is the most effective message for your audience? You don’t have to guess. If you tried different approaches within your campaign, such as different ad creatives or post formats, compare their performance to determine which strategies were more effective.

Feedback and Surveys

Sometimes there is no need to be clever. Just ask! Collect feedback from your audience through surveys or direct messages. Look for qualitative data can provide insights into your audience’s sentiment and to understand how well your campaign was perceived.

By analyzing these metrics and methods, you can gain a comprehensive view of your social media campaign’s success and make informed decisions for future campaigns. The specific metrics you focus on should align with your campaign objectives.

After you start simple and easy

November 3, 2023 admin Leave a comment

Following last month’s article on keeping things simple for the beginning promoter, there are some “next level” (but still simple and easy) steps that can enhance a campaign’s effectiveness and improve your overall results in social media promotions.

Here is the next level.

Plan a Content Calendar

Create a content calendar to schedule when and what type of content will be posted. Write a list of headlines (or topics) that you will address. Develop this content ahead of time, and keep to the posting schedule. Consistency is key in maintaining audience engagement. Include a mix of promotional, educational, entertaining, and interactive content.
This step is most crucial over the long run. The game is not just about attracting likes and followers, but also moving ahead of your competitors. They are already ahead of you (because you’re just starting out), but they have distractions in their lives as well. If you are more consistent than they are, over time, YOU WILL WIN.

Add Hashtags

Keep that content spreading. Include relevant hashtags into your posts. This can help your content reach a wider audience and improve discoverability among a like-minded audience.

Engagement and Interaction

Show a personal touch! This step is relatively easy when your audience is small. In fact, when your audience is small is the most effective time to get personal. Therefore, you can set aside some time to respond to comments, messages, and mentions. Engage with your audience through conversations, polls, contests, and Q&A sessions. Building relationships is essential for a successful campaign.
What if there is nobody to engage with? Get out there and engage with other people on other platforms, and respond to other posts. This activity will generate curiosity on the part of other people about what you’re doing. If other people are following effective promotion practices (and many are), they will also want to engage with you. Their engagement brings attention to your content. The snowball begins to roll.

Visuals

That’s just to say, keep things interesting. Visual content tends to perform well on social media. Use eye-catching images, videos, and graphics that align with your brand and message. Create your own, or you can subscribe to sites (some with a fee) from which you can use readily available images and videos.

Budget

Is this a business or a hobby? What business doesn’t have a marketing budget? Determine how much you’re willing to spend on your campaign. This could include costs for content creation, advertising, influencer collaborations, and any other promotional activities.
Depending on your budget, paid social media ads can effectively extend your campaign’s reach. Platforms often provide detailed targeting options to reach your desired audience. This option can be effective after you have laid the groundwork with some existing content and a small audience already in hand.

Measure and Analyze

Regularly monitor your campaign’s performance. The easiest way is to count the views and the likes. Comments that other people make, however, are probably the best indication of the level of engagement that you inspire. To post a comment, someone has to think about what you’ve published and craft a response. The brainpower they have engaged to do that indicates that you’ve touched them somehow (hopefully positively).
Ignore the trolls. Even if you see the occasional troll – they can be mean and nasty – no need to get hung up on that. Trolls don’t waste their time, they like to troll sites where they think others will see their comments. A troll is an indication that someone sees you and your online presence as something worth trolling about. You can see that as an amazing and satisfying milestone to have reached. If you don’t get any trolls, you might worry and wonder why nobody is paying attention to you.
Learn about your audience through analytics tools provided by the social media platforms or third-party tools. Track metrics such as engagement, reach, clicks, conversions, and more.

Adjust and Optimize

Learn Learn Learn: Based on the data collected, make necessary adjustments to your campaign strategy. This might involve tweaking content, targeting, or posting schedule to achieve better results.
Always be learning! At the end of your campaign, compare the results against your initial goals. Analyze what worked well and what could be improved, and apply these insights to future campaigns.

Even simple promotional efforts require some level of planning and attention to detail. Each step contributes to the overall success of your social media marketing efforts.

If you think this plan of action is easy and simple enough, then wait, there’s more good news: the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Case Study – Overcoming Challenges of the Highly Competitive Nail Salon Market

September 27, 2023 admin Leave a comment

Case Study – Overcoming Challenges of the Highly Competitive Nail Salon Market

Marketing a nail salon business comes with its own set of unique challenges due to the specific nature of the beauty and personal care industry. As typically owner-operated businesses with a significant amount of hands-on (pardon the pun) delivery of service, salon owners are continually pulled in multiple directions between business finances, paying the bills, managing staff, ensuring high quality service delivery, managing customers and – most pertinently to this article – marketing.

Standing out from the competition is enormously difficult. Not because a good quality service salon will not be appreciated by customers, but conveying a distinction of service is very difficult. To further challenge the business, nail salons are not just about the output, ie., cutting and painting nails, but about the customer experience from the moment they walk through the door.

Customers need a sense of identity, and a feeling of fulfillment that for the time they are in the salon, they can imagine themselves as being the boss, the leading community fashionista, and the center of attention. If the salon an fulfil this sense of being for the customer, they will obtain another life-long customer. Therefore, a successful salon marketing campaign must convey more than just the visual appeal of a high-quality result, but also create a positive association and brand identity.

More Challenges

But to get ahead with a successful marketing campaign, some additional challenges inherent in the nail salon business must be addressed.

Keeping Up with Trends: Beauty and fashion trends in nail art and designs can change rapidly. Staying up to date with the latest trends and the ability to offer them to clients must be a key theme for the marketing efforts.
Operational Challenges: One typical difficulty for nail salons is the rapid turnover in employees. That is, itself, an operational problem, but also for the marketing efforts – which require training on the part of the employee in charge – means that the owner must regularly carve out a piece of time during the day and week to keep up with consistent social media messaging.
Pricing: Along with the heavy competition as mentioned above, determining the right pricing strategy that balances profitability with affordability for your target market can be challenging. Promotional pricing must be favorable enough to bring in new customers, but not so good as to lose value/profitability from your existing (and well-paying) customer base.
Marketing Budget: Budgets are limited, and the social media marketing approach must reflect the need to get the maximum punch out of scarce resources. Effective marketing can be a costly but necessary hurdle, therefore marketing efforts, particularly at the early stages of business growth, may be focused on owner-directed campaigns.

Overcoming these challenges requires a systematic approach, aided by a well-conceived set of processes that will enable high growth potential with reduced manual input from the owner – ie., the key to success will be in appointing a capable employee to consistently develop and publish attractive content.

How can a nail salon overcome these marketing challenges?

The objective is to implement effective strategies to improve your online presence, reach your target audience, and build a strong online reputation. Here are some steps you can take:

First – Develop a Simple but Comprehensive Online Presence: The easiest way to create an online presence is through the many social media platforms that are available. Tell your customers, ask for their endorsement (positive reviews and likes) and begin to build a repertoire of positive consumer engagement.
Second – Implement Enhancements: Enhance your online content to showcases your nail salon’s services, pricing, and contact information, with routine postings of fashion trends, creative nail art designs, images of your salon, and feature happy employees.
Third – Further Leverage your Online Presence: Continue enhancements to include promotions, regular updates on services, and a booking system that allows clients to schedule appointments online. Track responsiveness of your audience, and encourage their responsiveness through intriguing articles and content, or through surveys and online chat sessions.

With a functional and value-added online presence, you will need to optimize for search engine results (SEO). Use relevant keywords, meta tags, and descriptions in your articles and content. Include your location and service highlights. Claim and verify your Google My Business listing to improve your visibility in local search results. Leverage your increased online activity from search using social media advertising to target local audiences and promote special offers.

When you see the results of these efforts, you can take your marketing to the next level by generating unique and high-value content of interest to a wider audience. Consistently post a blog on your website to provide helpful tips, nail care advice, and beauty trends. Share links to these articles on social media. Create engaging video content, such as tutorials or behind-the-scenes looks at your salon, and post them on platforms like YouTube and Instagram.

Continually encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Respond promptly and professionally to both positive and negative reviews to show your commitment to customer satisfaction.

With a foundation of growing traffic both to your social media postings and ultimately to your physical location, you can begin implementing more advanced strategies to both continue to grow the business and also to monetize your online presence through the sale of related products.

Email Marketing: Build an email list of clients and potential customers and send out regular newsletters with updates, promotions, and beauty tips. Personalize email content to make clients feel valued and engage.
Paid Advertising: Invest in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns, such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, to target specific demographics and geographic areas. Monitor and enhance your ad campaigns based on their performance.Provide Loyalty Programs and Special Offers.
Collaborate with Influencers (nationally-recognized influencers are very costly. Keep it local, aligned to your current and prospective customers).

Consistency is Key. Maintain a consistent online presence for both search engine effectiveness, as well as brand development in the minds of your customers. Having a strong online presence requires an ongoing process. It may take time to see significant results, but by consistently implementing these strategies and adapting to changes in the digital landscape, your nail salon can overcome online marketing challenges and attract more customers.

While there are some operational and inherent business challenges mentioned above, the good news for nail salon owners is that when it comes to online marketing, the business itself offers some distinct advantages. Nail care is inherently a visual activity, which aligns perfectly to the most effective tactics for online posting.

Visual Appeal: Nail salons offer visually appealing services, such as nail art and manicures, which can easily be captured in photos and videos. This visual content is highly shareable on social media platforms, making it easier to showcase your work and attract attention.
Passionate Customers: Nail care and beauty enthusiasts are often passionate about their self-care routines. They are more likely to engage with your salon on social media, leave reviews, and refer friends and family.
Trends: The nail care sector frequently experiences trends in nail art, colors, and designs. Staying up-to-date with these trends and incorporating them into your marketing can generate buzz and excitement around your salon, and is always a source of refreshing content.
Customer Loyalty: Salon clients often develop long-term relationships with the owner and staff at their preferred location. This means that customer complains on social media are limited. Building strong customer loyalty can result in repeat business, referrals, and positive word-of-mouth marketing.
Local Focus: You are not competing against large companies (national brand-name chains aside). Your clientele is local, which allows for focused and targeted marketing efforts. You can concentrate on local SEO, community engagement, and partnerships with neighboring businesses.
Affordable Promotions: Offering promotions, such as discounts or package deals, is a common marketing strategy in the beauty industry. Therefore, there is already a general expectation on the part of customers that promotions will be made available, so they are incentivized to engage with your social media presence to capture these promotional opportunities.
Potential for Niche Marketing: You can specialize in specific nail services or themes, such as eco-friendly nail care, nail art for special occasions, or unique nail designs. Your growing social media presence complements the offering of niche services.

Success in marketing any business, including a nail salon, requires a well-thought-out strategy, consistent effort, and a strong focus on customer satisfaction. The aforementioned approaches can be implemented with a few simple steps. The separation between you and your competition will come with the rigorous and consistent application of these strategies.

Stay Safe

March 30, 2020 admin Leave a comment

Companies are seeking solutions for social media within the context of movement restriction orders. There are some amazing learnings that are underway, showing the power of social media marketing even in difficult times. This post will be updated as results are further analyzed.

Facebook: Deathbed or Flu?

February 29, 2020 admin Leave a comment

The past two years have not been good for Facebook. After taking a series of blows in the media centering mainly on privacy concerns (Cambridge Analytica), security problems and the propagation of fake news, Facebook has some challenges to overcome.

Despite these situations – some of which might have completely flat-lined any other company – Facebook remains by far the go-to platform for social networking. For example, in the UK, online interactions on the Facebook mobile app fell 38% in the 2018-2019 financial year, and in the US, Facebook has seen a dramatic decline in monthly page visits, dropping to 4.7 billion from 8.5 billion over the course of two years.

Still at the top spot

While the headlines look ominous – and it is certainly not a positive situation for the company – Facebook remains resilient. They have lost some market share and online activity has fallen, but there is no doubt about it, Facebook remains by far in the top spot among social media users. In fact, despite the headlines and reports, even in North America (its hardest-hit market), Facebook’s active user base grew by 1% in North America, and 12% in Asia-Pacific, with a global average growth of 8%. 52% of social media users listed Facebook as their number one platform (down from 65% in 2015), but the next-highest ranking platform was Snapchat, at 16% (CNET).

Facebook has seen some tough times, but they are not in retreat. User habits are changing, and the population as a whole is becoming increasingly cynical about what they see and read online. In fact, that is a good thing. Our collective naivety over online information is waning. Consumers are slowly becoming smarter about filtering out information they see online, and becoming more critical of information and stories which somehow fail to pass the logic test or otherwise ring some kind of dissonance with their gut feel.

What this means for businesses

Businesses which carry out their marketing campaigns in an honest and ethical manner can only stand to benefit in the long run. This also means that businesses which invest in relationships with their customers up front by adding value and building trust can move ahead in the growth charts. Advertisers must still develop copy which stands out from the rest, they must still connect with their audience, and they must still promote their products and services with aggressive offers. All of these activities are and will continue to be fundamental to a good advertising campaign. The good news is that with growing cynicism among the online population as a whole, those businesses which gain the trust of their customers stand to gain their loyalty over the long run.

The same holds true for Facebook. Although our trust has been shaken, Facebook has seen in no uncertain terms that violating this public trust – despite the potential of short-term revenue gain – is very bad for business and long run sustainability. Facebook may never bounce back to its market share of five years ago, but it remains the leader of the pack, by a long shot.

For businesses, there is no particular loyalty to Facebook or any social media platform. As Facebook market share drops and others rise, the online marketing decisions will be more complex, and will include further deliberation as to which platform is best for a business, and where their customers are most likely to be found. Platforms will also compete with each other over advertising rates and their ability to help you effectively reach your target audience and potential customers. This competition is good, and social media as an industry will emerge stronger.

Stronger in the end

Similar to the human experience, few of us run faster in our 40s than we did in our 20s. Facebook has probably passed its prime in terms of market share (not overall membership), and its health has deteriorated lately. But like people, a cold or a flue now and then keeps our immune systems active and helps us to better fight of illness in the future.

We hope the same will be true with Facebook.

Six ways to dial up marketing in 2020 (without breaking the bank)

January 14, 2020 admin 2 Comments

The new year is upon us and so are many fantastic opportunities. To turn these opportunities into reality will require the same consistent, thorough and robust online marketing efforts as before, and at the same time, businesses will need to continue innovation in messaging and sales pipeline strategy. The effectiveness of new marketing strategies from 2018 and 2019 will begin to fade as clever new approaches start to take over.

Our approach at Content Savants is to continuously innovate online marketing while building – step by step with proven effectiveness – on tried and true methods that have made sustainable business growth possible for ourselves (including our internal products and services) and our clients.

Trends

First off, there are some key trends in areas that are near and dear to our hearts that we will briefly mention. These trends are in four key areas, which are areas that Content Savants specializes in regarding our customers and helping them to achieve their business goals.

Content Style: the first category is content. It is in our name! While some businesses which focus on specialty advisory or traditional services such as audit and advisory may continue with their persona of formality and traditionalism – which is what clients tent to expect from these types of companies, most other businesses will do best to follow a more conversational style and approach to messaging. This style can be applied to imaging (imagine people in relaxed settings with non-staged scenes), short-form descriptions, headers and bylines, as well as long-form descriptive text. Vocabulary should remain within a list of 2,000 commonly-used words, and verbiage written to replicate a conversational tone, of the type that a business people would have at a coffee shop, but not at a formal dinner or conference.
Content Substance: flowery language and scare tactics popular with so many sales funnel developers will not be enough. In continuation of long term trends, as information becomes more easily and readily available, consumers will continue to expect specific examples and data to back up assertions. That is why the research portion of your online messaging development will be ever more crucial in the coming years. 2020 will be a great chance to get ahead of the curve without significant expense in custom-tailored research requests.
Content Types: video content will continue to grow, as will the online platforms which enable video content creation. Facebook has already launched their Video Creation Kit, which enables advertisers to create “mobile-first” video ads which draw upon images already uploaded into your Facebook account. We have seen Facebook do similar types of automated video production in the form of commemorative and anniversary videos. With the Video Creation Kit, users can choose templates for basic customization and to adapt the advert according to your end goals, such as selling products or building brand value through unique messaging or stories. These can then be applied use in both Facebook or Instagram ads.
Leveraging Content: along with a rise in competitive efforts needed to push ahead of your competition, a key priority for 2020 should be to leverage your existing content into other channels. By this, we mean going beyond just online marketing opportunities, but also making sure that your business gets the broad range of exposure that will be critical to giving your business an added advantage. Print more business cards, attend more conferences, and get out there in a way that uses the content assets you have already generated. Here, we’re speaking involvement in speaking engagements, making guest posts on popular forums, and obtaining media coverage for your expertise. Use what you have and leverage that to the max!

These are just a few of the many developments that are shaping up to make 2020 an amazing year for online and social media marketing. These were selected based on their importance to small and medium-sized businesses, with a prioritization based on areas where Content Savants can be of direct service.

Six dial-up strategies

Now, as promised in the header, here are six actionable steps your business can begin to take right now, which can help boost your online presence and convert viewers to customers.

Use your email lists: have you asked customers to join your email list? Aside from the advertising funnel strategy, it is amazing how many businesses fail to take advantage of information they already have right in front of them. Email is still an extremely powerful means of communicating directly with customers. The key here is to offer them value. Customers see commercial email and will automatically assume it is junk. Or they see a newsletter and automatically assume that it will have no relevance. Why do they make these assumptions? Because that is what we have all come to learn and expect from the rash of absolute junk that comes to our in-boxes. Rather than promoting your business, give your customers real information that they can use, and write it in a way that sticks in their minds.
Up your blogging game: is your business a once-per-week blogger? (Even us, we try to be, but customers come first! …and lately we’ve been very busy – but that’s NO EXCUSE, not for us, not for you or for anyone). Time to ante up and increase your messaging. Let customers know that you are serious about building a relationship with them, increase their trust in your brand, and let them know that you are an ACTIVE business. One more blog per week goes a long way.
Entice interaction: a quick and simple step you can take now is to ask your customers about their experience with your product or services, either through a photo or a short paragraph. Encourage their participation through a reward for the best entry, and posting that (and all of them) online. This approach gives them value and helps to build your own set of testimonials, while creating a fun and interactive engagement.
Speak to customers directly: while you’re at it, combining this step with the previous one can enable you to receive vital feedback on your business activities directly from your most valued customers. Choose a handful of customers (as your time allows) and get them on the phone. You can tell them you are the owner, tell them how valuable their business is, and ask if they can answer a few survey questions – or just start asking them some basic questions about their experience. The most important part here is, among those who are positive with you, ask them kindly to post a (honest) review. A kind, personal request can stretch miles beyond an email reminder in terms of getting their attention and earning their active support of your business.
Expand your business: of course that is always the objective. In this context, while you’re working on steps 3 and 4, go ahead and take the next baby step in the conversation and ask them for a referral. While not all businesses offer products which lend themselves to referrals (you can think of your own examples), you can at least solicit their idea about the type of customers they think that you should be targeting. Some people will respond by saying “well, I don’t know it’s not my business,” but if you have already developed a positive rapport, take advantage of the fact that people love to give advice and to be an expert. They have already bought into your service or product, so they must know something about who is your best target. At the very least, from this type of question, if they respond by giving you a profile of someone that does not match their own profile (as in, “someone else would be more interested in this product than I am”), that can give you a new perspective on what your selling, who your selling it too, and what value customers are getting from your offer.
Annual review: take a couple hours and write down successful efforts and lessons learned from the past year. So often it is easy to forget an idea that we thought about pursuing and then got distracted, or a mistake that lent itself to some important lessons, or otherwise small but important goals that got lost in the shuffle. Take some time to reflect on the past year, identify some opportunities that may have fallen through the cracks, and put those back on the list for 2020.

Have a great year in 2020 and look forward to working with you to make your business ambitions a success!

In-store branding vs. online branding

November 27, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Many companies have a highly detailed brand reference manual, which governs everything from the color of marketing materials to the behavior of customer facing personnel. Social media guides are also coming into frequent use by companies, to guide marketing departments in their efforts to improve brand recognition and product awareness through online channels.

All online communication begins with content development. While the form and style of communication receives a bulk of the attention from marketing departments, often times the content development process is left to the creative inspiration of the department employees – and for many businesses, that “department” is one person, churning out content day after day. Content Savants is well-positioned to help companies in this effort, having creative processes in place with a well-experienced team of developers to provide content that fits with not only the business objectives of our clients, but also matches the personality of the business.

We also provide support in the development of social media strategy and style guides. While we remain ready to support businesses in their social media objectives, we also would like to encourage businesses (both small and large) to put in writing for themselves what they see as their optimal social media strategy. A highly detailed plan is not necessary to give the social media team (or employee) a practical direction on the development of postings, memes and blogs. The content developer need only take a page out of the traditional marketing books to carry out the task.

Floor Staff Policy	Social Media Policy
Floor staff are required to be in uniform, which is functionally designed according to the employee’s role, and with colors that are reflective of the company’s brand identity and logo	Social media team must use templates provided, which are made consistent with the business branding, its colors and media layout, with the logo overlaid onto the media in a way that does not distract from the main message but conveys positive association with the brand and logo
Floor staff must be appropriately groomed (for restaurants, this point is key, and includes covering of head and facial hair, as well as washing hands and general hygiene requirements)	Social media must be proof-read, colloquial expressions must be reflective of the target audience and used with limitations, grammar and spelling must be correct, as well as alignment of graphics and text to portray a positively-remembered aesthetic
Floor staff must greet customers with a smile, initiate and advance orders according to standard phrases (“would you like fries with that?”), and must treat both customers and fellow employees with respect and courtesy	Social media must be respectful of its audience, without negative implications for any groups of people, and for purposes of brand development, may frequently use pre-approved promotional phrases, content patterns and messaging according to a pre-determined template
Floor staff must arrive 5 minutes before their shift begins, may take breaks at designated times, and must be attentive during the work day to meet and fulfill the requirements of their roles and according to procedures in the employee manual	Social media must be published on a regular basis, and must be developed according to the objectives of the social media campaign for which they are designed – internal approval of content must be followed to ensure policies have been followed with respect to content and messaging
Floor staff are subject to disciplinary procedures for non-compliance with the rules and processes as outlined in the employee manual.	Businesses may suffer consequences in reduced customers or customer loyalty through a lack of effectiveness in their social media strategy, or worse, a backfiring of sentiment against the brand for social media that is posted irresponsibly and without compliance to company policies

From our view, social media platforms are a parallel to the natural communication that we have with other people on a daily, even hourly basis. Planning for a social media can therefore match its real-world equivalent: floor staff. Here are some key areas of consideration, for comparison:

For all businesses, taking the time to write down key themes to be developed in their social media campaigns – no matter how simple or small in scale – to ensure that the content developed for social media is aligned to and fits with the business’s overall goals with respect to customer engagement and business development. While development of social media presence is an iterative process that improves over time, taking the time to write down some key principles and templates can enable step-sized improvements in a shorter amount of time.

New FB feature can improve business targeting

November 26, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Facebook is currently in a phase of testing a new capability that will allow page owners the ability to share and reveal content specifically targeted at pre-determined contact groups. This capability will be connected to Facebook Stories and Messenger.

Companies that use Facebook as a way to communicate to their customers – most frequently being entertainment, retail, fashion and specialty businesses – will typically develop content that is relevant to the wide body of users and followers. With the opportunity to narrow content broadcasts to a select few, businesses can better target their messaging and hone in on key interests to the defined customer audience.

The content development process typically begins with profiling either the existing base of users via key interest and demographic indicators, or profiling the specifically the target audience that the business aims to develop and convert to sales. Having the ability to better target content is something that businesses have long been waiting from Facebook. This current testing effort is indication that Facebook is further responding to these requests, and enabling businesses to better leverage their promotions on this increasingly critical marketing platform.

This development would be par for the course in a social environment that aims to reflect and complement the way people naturally communicate. On a social level, we all have friends, family and contacts with different interests. Our communication to each group is different, and tailored to their interest, or our common interests. In a similar fashion that perhaps a college student wouldn’t discuss details of last weekend’s frat party with close family (or maybe they would?), the message to new versus existing customers may be very different. Social media communication can reflect real-life communication, and with that, increase our engagement overall.

We believe that is the best foundational view for content development, and hope to see Facebook and others continue to replicate a natural social structure in their social communication platform.