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Marketing Tip of the Week: Jumping on the Trend Wagon

March 13, 2015 by Caleb Hennington Leave a Comment

Participating in social trends is a great way to connect to your customers, and give people the impression that your company’s social media account isn’t just a mindless robot, but a relatable person.

If you’re looking to find ways to engage in fun social media trends, but also get people to notice your brand, check out these three tips on how to jump on the trend wagon.

Jump On It Fast

When trending topics happen, whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or some other platform, it comes and goes very quickly. You need to be ready to jump in on the fun right when it’s happening. If you don’t, before you know it everyone else will have already moved on and you’ll be tweeting hashtags with yesterday’s Internet fad. Usually, unless the topic is something that occurs for multiple days (Olympics, festivals, world series, TV shows), most trends happen within a 24 hour period. When you start seeing multiple people using the same hashtag on your feed, that’s when you know you need to jump on the bandwagon.

Use Some Tact

When tweeting trending topics, always remember to us a little tact when coming up with your social message. There are countless examples out there of companies that failed to understand the meaning of a trend, or posted something that was offensive to customers. For example, when the Ray Rice domestic abuse fiasco was happening, the hashtag #WhyIStayed popped up all over social media. DiGiorno Pizza mistakenly tweeted out, “#WhyIStayed You had pizza,” and Twitter immediately unloaded on the company. DiGiorno later apologized for the tweet, saying they didn’t know the meaning of the hashtag, but the company’s error is a great message to other companies to research your hashtag meanings before you use them.

A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014

Use It To Bring People To Your Brand

During the #TheDress debate that occurred a few weeks ago, the Internet was up in arms about whether a badly photographed picture of a dress was blue and black, or white and gold (it’s blue and black, by the way). While the debate stirred on through different social media outlets, many companies took notice and began using the debate as a way to promote their brands. Xbox tweeted out a picture of a new blue and black controller design (asking if it looked white and gold), Specsavers asked people who see the dress as white and gold to come in for an eye exam.

For all of you who think #theDress is #WhiteandGold, come and visit us for an eye test #shouldve https://t.co/meL7PikOJu — Specsavers (@Specsavers) February 27, 2015

And most innovative of all, the Salvation Army used the debate as a way to raise awareness for domestic violence. There’s always a way to use a trend as promotion for your brand or even to show support for certain social causes.

Why is it so hard to see black and blue? One in 6 women are victims of abuse. #StopAbuseAgainstWomen pic.twitter.com/cpNgEWGekq

— The Salvation Army (@salvationarmy) March 6, 2015

So remember, trending topics aren’t always meaningless Internet fun. They might also have marketing and branding advantages for your company!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Hashtag Etiquette

February 27, 2015 by Caleb Hennington Leave a Comment

#etiquette

The humble hashtag has been around a lot longer than social media would lead us to believe. Although adopted and popularized by Twitter in 2007, the hashtag has been around since the late ’90s, used by Internet Relay Chat to categorize images, messages, videos and other items into groups. Since that time, most social media platforms have embraced the hashtag, including Instagram, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.

And with that intro, a code of ethics was born. Although, like the Internet, these are not set-in-stone rules about what’s proper when using hashtags, following these 5 easy steps will definitely help your business succeed by increasing your social presence, and preventing you from committing mild Internet no-no’s.

Hashtag Only Relevant Tags

Just because you CAN hashtag a word doesn’t mean you HAVE to hashtag it. Hashtagging the word “new” in the sentence, “Check out the beautiful #new floral arrangement from Bill’s Flowers!” won’t help your tweet any, because “new” relates to so many different topics. Hashtagging “floral arrangement” or “Bill’s Flowers,” however, will direct customers exactly where they need to go to find more tweets or posts related to your hashtagged words. Ex: “Check out the beautiful new #FloralArrangement from #BillsFlowers!”

Stay Away From Excessively Long Hashtags

Hashtags are great for tagging one or two words, or even sentences with only a few words, but when you make the mistake of hashtagging an entire paragraph full of words, you just end up confusing customers. DON’T: “#checkoutouronlineexclusivedealsavailableinourwebstore.” DO: “Check out our #OnlineExclusive deals available in our webstore!” And when you do use multiple words in a tweet, capitalize the first letter of every word in your sentence, to make the tag easier to read.

5 Minute Marketing Tip of the Week

Use Hashtags For Promotion, But Don’t Spam

No one likes spam, not even the people who make it (we’d like to think). So it’s okay to use hashtags to promote an event, like a #WeeklyNewsletter, but a weekly newsletter means you send it out weekly. Don’t excessively tweet about checking out your business’s newsletter every day. The day before, or day of the newsletter going out is plenty.

#TeamFollowBack #LikeForLike and #RepostForRepost Are Bad

I’m sure we’ve all encountered those random accounts that follow us on Twitter and Instagram for seemingly no reason. Usually, those accounts are spam accounts that are looking only to get the most followers possible and have no interest in what you’re business is actually about. So don’t use your social accounts to follow hundreds or thousands of people that have no relationship to your business. Users get annoyed by this. Make sure to really research those you wish to follow before clicking the button (making sure they’re not spam accounts first, of course).

#Don’t #Hashtag #Every #Word

#Seriously #Don’t #Do #This. It’s unnecessary and makes it almost impossible for tags to be grouped properly. Hashtags aren’t meant to make categorization easier, not more convoluted and infuriating to navigate.

Remember, hashtags are meant to make your use of social media optimal and more efficient. Don’t make it any harder than it needs to be.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Post at the Right Time!

June 20, 2014 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

The conversation about social media is never ending, and for a good reason. It’s possibly the single easiest and fastest way to increase your market awareness, grow your customer base and make more money. In other words, social media is important to the continued and future success of your business. In recent weeks this article has covered different outlets for social media, how to determine which is best for you and the best ways to structure your content to succeed on those platforms. (In case you missed it, here is part 1, part 2 and part 3.)

Not Just What But When

Today is the day you discover not what you should say, but when you should say it! That’s right, there has been research done to determine the best times to post on all the most popular social media platforms in order to reach the broadest audience and potentially influence the most customers. Where does this research come from, you ask? Well, I’m proud to say not from me. There are a plethora of statistical sites that run numbers like this, but the data I’m going to share with you today came from SumAll.com. So, without further ado, the best times to post for each of the major platforms is as follows:

Twitter 1-3 pm
Facebook 1-4 pm
Tumblr 7-10 pm
Instagram 5-6 pm
Pinterest 8-11 pm
Google+ 9-11 pm

Why It Matters

Now obviously, you can post at other times as well, but you want to make sure your most important posts are made either during these windows or right before them. Why? Because the more time that has passed between your audience logging in and your post, the more time it has to get lost in the stream of material cascading through their feed. Have you ever had a friend ask if you saw their Facebook post only to reply with a shrug and a promise to go look for it? And then how much trouble did you actually have in locating it even when you were looking for it? If you want your content to be seen, the need to be posting when your customers are browsing cannot be overstated.

So take this information and use it to make your marketing strategy more efficient. After all, successful marketing means a successful business!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Which Social Media Platform is Right for You? (Part 3)

April 25, 2014 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

We’ve talked about the four biggest social media platforms for finding new customers and their communities over the last two weeks. So how do you go about mastering them? The easiest answer would be to dive in and play with the administrative tools, but that can lead to some errors you may not want to make publicly. So for starters:

Use the Help Feature

Each of these websites has a handy help section accessible from the options menu. If you’re reluctant to use the help feature because you remember early computers and the complete lack of help to be found in the ‘help’ area, fret not. These sites understand that their bread and butter is you, the customer, and they make every attempt to make their systems as easily accessible and understandable as possible. If that option doesn’t answer your questions or get you where you want to go, there are numerous free online guides for using each of these big four.

Cater to Your Potential Customer

Remember that each of these platforms has its own community with their own likes, preferences and style. If you are going to be a part of these communities, you need to operate within them and not just toss your advertising up and walk away. It’s called social media because it’s important to be social. You want to interact with your customers as much as the platform allows and post things they will be interested in, not just things that help your bottom line.

Obviously ignoring your bottom line isn’t an option either, but you have to find a balance between the two. It means spending time on the platform of your choice to learn the culture, but the eventual rewards make the effort worth it.

Social media has the potential to be an extremely powerful marketing tool, but like all tools, it requires that the one wielding it be knowledgeable and skillful in order to yield the best results. So choose a platform in which to specialize and make it work for you!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Which Social Media Platform is Right for You? (Part 2)

April 18, 2014 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

Last week we began discussing different popular social media platforms and which would be best for your business. The differences between Twitter and Facebook are obvious and both sites have a distinctive flavor different from the other, but what about two social media platforms with a lot more similarities than differences?

Marketing with Photos

Pinterest – THE social media platform for Do-It-Yourself, and a great marketing platform for businesses that sell DIY items or are friendly to DIY’ers. For example, a florist may write blogs about DIY decorating tips with flowers. This business would be best served by placing links to those blogs on Pinterest. This would generate interest in their business as well as their industry. With the ability to have different boards used for different topics, they could also have a board dedicated to their best work. This type of approach is perfect for the system that Pinterest has in place.
Instagram – There is no better platform for visual businesses. If you create or carry visually striking items, or you enjoy taking photos of everyday items and using photo filters on them, Instagram is for you. That’s not to say the same visuals wouldn’t do well on Pinterest or Facebook or even Twitter, but Instagram is all about the creative picture and digital modification of same. The community there enjoys interesting photos but suffer obvious advertisement poorly. Always work within the community. It’s the hallmark of a good marketing campaign.

Come back next week for a quick look at how best to leverage these sites to your advantage!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Which Social Media Platform is Right for You? (Part 1)

April 11, 2014 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

“There are only so many hours in the day.”

You’ve heard that before. It has certainly been said more times than one could count, but it’s lasted so long as a cliche because it’s true. No matter what you have to get done or how badly you want to do everything on your list, you are still limited by the restrictions on your time. And that is never more true than when talking about marketing with social media.

The Social Media Logjam

There are so many viable options in social media, and all of them seem important to the success of your business. They may be, but if you aren’t leveraging them properly, you are probably doing more harm than good. It is far better to master one than perform badly across several. There is only one social media site that any business with an online presence must be using, and that’s Google+. But as for the others, which social media platform is right for you?

Finding the Perfect Fit

Every social media platform has a target audience and an expected tone. The key to understanding where you belong is understanding what those expectations actually are.

Facebook – This platform is probably the most popular and the most inclusive. Every business can find an audience, and most of your customers will have an account. Your potential market there is larger than most anywhere else, but with its pay-to-promote system in place, it’s no longer the cheapest and easiest way to market your business online. Also, its popularity acts as both a boon and a curse.Everyone uses Facebook and everyone markets themselves there. That ties into this little issue of the news feed which grows along with Facebook’s popularity. Facebook should definitely be on your list as it is easy to master, but it may not be your best and most lucrative outlet.
Twitter – The bird is great if you are a business that likes to be directly involved with your customers. It promotes a level of customer interaction at which other social media sites only take a swipe. Most Twitter conversations take place as discussions around current topics or news items. When something changes or is added to your store or industry, tweet about it and if enough people are interested, you can potentially start a trending topic.This does require a more hands-on approach, but the 140 character limit on post length makes it a quick distraction from your daily duties.

The differences between these two platforms are very obvious, and the audience you will reach while using each is variable. Do neither of these options sound like the ideal fit for your business? Make sure you check back next week when we look at two more social media sites and how they might fit into your business marketing strategy.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Balancing Your Facebook Content

November 8, 2013 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

I’ve devoted many different posts in this space to Facebook, and with good reason. Social Media is not only the future of marketing, it’s the present! Knowing that, it should come as no surprise that I put so much time and effort into discussing how to use it. Today I am continuing that theme as I discuss how to balance your Facebook content!

Placing Content Behind the “Like”

As you know, getting a “Like” is the best way to promote your business on Facebook. The more “Like”s you receive, the more people will see the content you post and the more likely you are to reach a broader audience. The problem lies in getting people to click that pesky “Like” button. They may come to your page, peruse your content and still not click “Like”. So what do you do?

Simple. Give them a reason.

Marketing Tip

Do you provide useful information about products on your page? Place tidbits out where any visitor can see them, but place the good stuff behind fan only content. Perhaps you want to offer a coupon to your followers only? Again, place it behind the Like! It will encourage those who don’t follow you to do so, and those who already do will in no way be inconvenienced!

Balance in All Things

Of course, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Placing all of your content or all of your specials behind the Like screen will have a negative effect. Potential followers won’t be enticed to click Like because they’ll have no idea why they should. You have to offer something valuable on the surface. Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Balancing Your Facebook Content” »

Marketing Tip of the Week: Understanding Your Multiple Doors

September 13, 2013 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

The purpose of marketing is to get the customer walking in your door. But in this modern age, how do we define door? Aren’t all access points available to your customer doorways? They are, after all, a way to access your business. Your website, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter pages are merely doors your customers digitally walk through. In fact, every new post you make creates another doorway, opening opportunities for a customer to find and connect with you.

Beautifying Your Door

Marketing Tip

When the customer walks through your physical door, he is greeted by trained customer service personnel. The store is well-maintained. The products are prominently displayed and easy to find. Your specialities are highlighted and anything less impressive is downplayed. Shouldn’t the experience through your online doors be as attractive and enjoyable as that which you work so hard to achieve in your brick and mortar location?

Each online access point is as much a reflection of your business as your physical building. You have to maintain it with the same fastidious attention to detail. Just as you would never want a customer to see the inside of your store if all the shelves were covered with an inch-thick layer of dust, you shouldn’t want customers viewing a website or social media page you haven’t updated in months.

It is imperative that you provide the best customer experience regardless of the method that customer uses to enact their visit.

How to Keep Your Online Door Swinging Free

Making your site attractive and enjoyable is predicated on one thing, the content you generate. If you read my column, you know that I pound the podium on this issue at every turn. Why am I so adamant? Because it’s that important! The days of the static web page has passed. Search engines don’t like them, and there are just too many sites out there interacting with their visitors regularly for any customer to be satisfied with the passive approach.

Click the name for more detailed information on how to improve your content in general or for websites, Facebook, or Twitter. Thanks for reading this week’s column, and come back next Friday to check out our newest Marketing Tip of the Week. As always, your comments or questions are welcome!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Pinterest and B2B’s

September 6, 2013 by FGmarket Leave a Comment

Pinterest is often viewed as a B2C (business to consumer) format. It’s true that the platform allows for many options in that arena, but it is in no way restricted to it. Pinterest can be just as effective for B2B (business to business) companies, and I want to lay out a few tips illustrating why and how you should be using it!

Go to Your Clients

Marketing Tip

There’s no doubt that Pinterest is an excellent B2C tool, and one of the most compelling things about it is that often consumers search out the businesses! They see a compelling photo? They pin it. They find a tasty-looking recipe? They pin it. They find a gorgeous hand-knit cardigan? They pin it!

Because of that, businesses who market to consumers are flocking to Pinterest. And if those companies are establishing a presence on Pinterest, shouldn’t you, as a marketer to those companies, also be establishing a presence? Marketing 101, go to where your clients live!

Direct Traffic to Your Content

Remember all the quality content that we’ve been talking about these last few months? Pinterest is an excellent tool you can use to direct customers to that content! Did you use the perfect image in your last marketing campaign? Pin it. Did you write an excellent blog post? Pin it.

These images will link back to your content, and the viral power of social media will do the rest. If a company who Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Pinterest and B2B’s” »

Social Media: Helping Grow Your Business

August 20, 2013 by Kelly Curtis Leave a Comment

August 2013
Vendor Spotlight • FGmarket Buzz • Suggest a Vendor

Gold Crystalline Bowl from Ellie Pots Inc.
Social Media CAN Help Grow Your Business

In a fast paced, ever-changing market, social media has become a necessity for businesses. Whether your business is a mom and pop store or an international leader, social media is important. Often times TV commercials are fast forwarded, newspaper sales are declining, and billboards are becoming outdated. Social media is fast and easy to manage for a company of any size. The three main social media resources a company should use are Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tweet Tweet – Information is passed to someone in the blink of an eye, for free, and can include a link to your website or a picture. Not only is it appealing to younger generations, but all generations are quickly becoming engaged in Twitter. Give it a try and see where it can take your business.
Insta – what? – Instagram is the newest social media platform to take off. This social media tool allows users to post pictures and videos to their profile for followers to see. Therefore, followers of your company’s Instagram account can see exactly what your products look like, which leaves a lasting impression.
Is It Facebook Official? – A company can utilize everything from videos to pictures to text posts. You are free to add as many “friends” as you would like, which is a way for your company name and image to reach the masses, again FOR FREE!

Keeping up with current trends in the ever-changing landscape of online media will be key in developing and growing your business to levels you never imagined! Read More About Social Media

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