Advertising, Design, Social Media & Printing Easton - Philadelphia www.cliffross.com
SOCIAL MEDIA OVERVIEW The platforms may change, but social media is here to stay as another dimension of your business. As the younger generations grow, social media will be ingrained in all that they do. Back in the day, you had to advertise with the Yellow Pages, then a website. Now, a social media presence is imperative for your business. FACEBOOK: The current king of social media. This is the best place to reach the majority of people on social media. Teenagers are the only age group that started to move away from Facebook as their primary social media site. TWITTER: The place to have a conversation. This is the best place to reach the younger demographic. Envision a virtual townsquare, where conversations and interactions happen; and information is shared rapidly. LINKEDIN: The place to take care of business. Linkedin is hyperfocused on business and B2B. Unlike the other social media platforms, when users are on Linkedin, they have one thing on their mind: business. PINTEREST: This is where the women are. Whether it s teenagers planning their prom, young adults planning their wedding, or older women looking for recipes or craft ideas. Pinterest s popularity among women looking for ideas is growing rapidly. YOUTUBE: YouTube makes it easy to engage with customers through video. The attention span of the average web viewer is quickly diminishing and people read less and less making YouTube the second most used site on the Internet.
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY Regardless of the platform, many of the same maxims apply. Pick one platform to start with. Preferably the one most relevant and effective for your business. NOTES: Plan your posts in advance. Making a schedule saves time and maximizes effectiveness. Season your schedule with the following: links to articles, text only posts, custom graphic posts, relevant work photos, questions/engagement, sharable graphics with your branding. Use hashtags! Develop your own plus use common ones. Edgerank: Just because 500 people like your page, doesn t mean all 500 people will see your posts. The better your posts, the more engagement, then more people will see them. Encourage users to follow all your posts by changing their settings Text only posts on Facebook reach more people than graphic posts, so have a good mix. Utilize social media advertising: It is inexpensive and effective. Make sure your voice is consistent and that all your content is consistent and branded.
YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY Regardless of the platform, many of the same maxims apply. Review what types of posts are most effective and refine your schedule accordingly NOTES: Take pauses. No need to post every day, every week. For example - post every week day for three weeks, take a week off. Pre-load posts, so you save time. Vary the timing of your posts. have some during the day, some at night - everyone is on at different times. Stay away from down times - 9am on Monday, 5pm on Friday etc. Use custom graphics only! Using graphics like clip art from Google images will make you look unprofessional and make your page look cluttered. Utilize the extra features that each platforms offers. For example use tabs in facebook to make your page like a mini website woobox.com and shortstack.com are third party sites that offer more functionality for your Facebook tabs. Do social reach on a regular basis: Comment and like other business and community posts. Be a part of the virtual discussion, while building your brand and online presence.
TV, Tablets and your customer An Increasing amount of people are interacting with their devices while watching TV. If you do television advertising, get those hashtags in there Hijack the popularity of a TV show. During a television show, users are commenting on social media and hashtagging their comments. So during Game of Thrones for example, get a post out there that is relevant to your business and hashtag it #gameofthrones
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING Inexpensive and cost effective. Compare traditional ad costs vs social media ad costs. There is a big difference in cost and results.
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING OPTIONS Graphic posts can only be 10-15% text or they re rejected Boosting posts is easy and inexpensive Sponsored Stories is most effective and receives page likes. Once you receive the likes, you can engage that audience.
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING OPTIONS - BOOSTING POSTS
TWITTER TIPS Use a profile picture that people can recognize (you or your company logo, pic is small so not too busy) Try to use specific keywords (people can search any word and tweets will come up containing that word) Keep Twitter profile public if you want people that aren t following you yet to see your tweets Use hashtags when discussing a trending topic so that others discussing it can see (#JustinBieber, #Sochi2014) (look around on Twitter to find out what hashtags are trending regarding a certain topic) Put your Twitter name in other things that you use so that people know that they can follow you on Twitter (incorporate into email signature etc.) If you want to keep someone as a follower, follow them back Don t use up all 140 characters in your tweet, leave room for links, hashtags and quotes (same as a Retweet but contains your original tweet and what the person quoting it wants to say) Retweet things so that your personal timeline consists of more than just what you have to say Connect Twitter with other social media platforms (having tweets published on Facebook or LinkedIn allows more people to see them and possibly go and follow your Twitter account)
LINKED IN TIPS Make sure you know the people you try to connect with (if too many people deny your request LinkedIn can shut you down) Change connection request to something that is more personal (remind the person of where/how you met) Share posts to Twitter if you want to get traffic from your Twitter to go to your LinkedIn and if you want your Twitter followers to see the same information Accept requests from competitors with caution, they can view what you are doing who you are connected with and potentially take business from you Follow customers and prospects, this way they may follow you and will be up-to-date on everything you are communicating Don t send sales messages to people on LinkedIn (defeats the purpose for people who are there for the right reason)