There’s no getting away from it, Facebook is the biggest social network!

Having high customer engagement rates is becoming essential for a business’ success on Facebook. Therefore we thought we’d put together some of the most important scientific facts, so that you can measure and compare how well your engagement with your fans is going.

We have broken down the science for you behind raising ‘Engagement Rates’, ‘Best Posting Times’ and ‘Rules for Images.’

Engagement facts:

• Keep your posts as short as possible – posts with 80 characters or less normally get up to 23% higher interaction rates.
• When posting pictures, why not ask fans to write captions for it now and again. This is a fun way to encourage engagement and can increase comments by 5.5 times!
• Ask a question! A simple opinion driven question or a request for fans to ‘fill in the blanks’, will bring in 90% more engagement than your average post.
• Post to your Facebook Page daily; remember that 96% of fans aren’t coming back to your page, so posting frequently is the only way to reach them.
• Be relevant and not too pushy – posts related to but not directly about your brand tend to perform best. No one wants to be directly ‘sold to’ on social. It’s a turn off – so keep that in mind.
• Almost 99% of brands do not actively network or engage with the brands they like. So, have a think about the brands or businesses out there that you like, or that could be really useful for your business or brand – look them up on Facebook, give them a ‘Like,’ say hello and start a conversation!

Posting Times:

• If you’re posting on weekdays during work hours, be sure to get a healthy number of updates in between the hours of 1pm and 4pm. Facebook is at its noisiest in the afternoon -so be sure to join the conversation and engage with your fans when they’re keen to engage.
• Test schedule some posts ‘out of hours’ after normal work hours and before 8pm.  This is the time people are potentially commuting and turning to their smartphones to catch up on news and chatter.
• Many research reports show that 3pm on a Wednesday is the optimum time to get interaction on a Facebook post. So, if you do only post one a week (which we hope isn’t the case!) make sure it’s on a Wednesday at 3.
• During the weekends, the worst times to posts are before 8am and after 8pm; as people tend not to engage before and after those times. Let’s think about that, who’s going to get up before 8am on the weekend?!  (Unless you have young children of course!)
• Generally, users tend to check their personal Facebook Page more than their Business Page. Around 41% check their Business Page up to 1-2 times a day! We hope this isn’t the case with you – because in order for your business page to be a success, it needs to be constantly checked for comments and opportunities to engage.
• These posting times and tips are taken from general research.  However, posting times will vary depending on the type of business you are – e.g. if you’re a bar/restaurant then you may get more engagement in the evening. Our advice is to watch, listen and learn. Test different times and see when it is that you get the most engagement, then be sure to share at the times you know you get the most engagement.

Facebook Images:

• Remember when posting on Facebook always include images.  Images increase interaction rates by 39% more than your average post!
• Images draw engagement rates in more than videos and text alone! Up to a whopping 120% more than your average post.
• Image posts generally attract 104 more comments than the average post.
• Link clicks are generally higher than text and link posts alone, receiving up to 84% more clicks.
• Posts that include photo albums receive 180% more engagement than the average post.

So folks, make sure you’re up to date with these important facts and don’t be afraid to experiment…

Happy Facebook posting!

Kat

Kat West is a Social Media Community Manager at Carvill Creative – the Online Visibility Experts. Kat spends her days, tweeting, sharing, listening, researching and blogging. (As well as a little sleeping and eating and having fun too)!

Here, we’ve broken down the scientific facts for you on Twitter for ‘Engagement Rates’, ‘Posting Times’, use of ‘Hashtags’, ‘Mentions’ and ‘Retweets.’

Read on to measure and compare how your business is engaging with its followers…

Engagement facts:

• The number one main rule on Twitter – Don’t talk about yourself all the time; instead be useful to others.  Informative tweets are 30 times more effective at snagging new followers!
• 92% of engagement with tweets is clicking on the links within the tweet.  So, where relevant include a link in your tweet, but be careful not to be ‘pushing out’ promotional links all the time.
  
• Media tweets (such as video or images) receive on average 3 to 4 times more engagement.
• Stay active when followers are making complaints about your business/brand. On Twitter, 25% of people expect a response within the hour from a business/brand and 10% expect a response within the first 20minutes! Always check the @ on your Twitter profile so you can follow conversations and see what people are commenting on. It’s also good practice to have Apps loaded onto your smartphones so that you can check mentions on the go.
• Tweets between 120 and 130 characters get the highest click through rates – so try keep your tweets as short and to the point as possible!

Posting Times:

• Twitter engagement rates for businesses/brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday, yet only 19% of them actually tweet on weekends! So seize your opportunity here, get tweeting on the weekend when the platform is quieter and more people will be listening. Use social media dashboards, to schedule your activity to run over the weekend, no problem!
•  The highest Twitter reaction rates are between 8am and 7pm – this is prime time, so be sure to schedule tweets between these times.
• Make sure you’re tweeting later on in the day too; tweets in the afternoon tend to get seen more than those in the morning.
• For those who post a concentrated number of tweets in a short time span, follower growth is 50% more than expected – however, while this may be true, try not to bombard your followers with tweets, this may come across as spammy. Plus remember, 80% of those on Twitter use it via mobile – if you post tweets one after the other, then you can fill up their feed – which can be pretty annoying.

Hashtags#:

• Hashtags can increase engagement by almost 100%. Keep in mind that people usually follow hashtags for keywords, events and trending topics, so make sure your hashtags are kept simple so that others can understand.
• Tweets with hashtags receive 2x more engagement than those without.
• Having one or two hashtags in a tweet has 21% higher engagement than those with 3 or more hashtags. (If all you are doing is sharing a string of hashtags – how is that a conversation?).
• Tweets that use more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement. So, make sure you’re savvy with your use of hashtags!

@Mentions and Retweets:

• Using more @mentions (targeting a post to a specific @handle) increases your follower growth – organisations that tweet more @mention grow followers by 17% more than a tweet without @mention.
• Be sure to choose the right words and phrases to get attention; action words have higher engagement rates than nouns. Tweets containing ‘@’, ‘RT’ and ‘please,’ also contain higher engagement rates.
• 78% of a brands/businesses brands engagement tweets are retweets.
• Asking followers to retweet, receive 12x higher retweet rates than those that do not, yet less than 1% of brands actually implement this strategy! (Perhaps we all don’t want to come across as desperate!)
• When followers are specifically asked to retweet by spelling the word out, the retweet rate is 23xs higher than average – so try and fit it in your Tweet if you can!

 

Again, make sure you’re up to date with these important facts and don’t be afraid to experiment… Happy Tweeting folks!

Kat

Kat West is a Social Media Community Manager at Carvill Creative – the Online Visibility Experts. Kat spends her days, tweeting, sharing, listening, researching and blogging. (As well as a little sleeping and eating and having fun too)!

 

LinkedIn has become a serious business tool for professionals and organisations.

With more than 10 million UK members and more than 200 million globally – LinkedIn is a significant resource for people to be tapping into.

Whilst the platform is still vitally useful for those looking for employment, or finding new talent – it is increasingly used by organisations or decision makers as a first port of call when looking to reach out for new suppliers too.

Unlike, Twitter or Facebook where you may visit for ‘entertainment’ value as well as for business – LinkedIn is the serious business to business network.  Whether you are looking for employment, talent, business development opportunities or looking for new suppliers – LinkedIn is the social network people visit to ‘do business’.

In the latter part of 2012, LinkedIn made a number of revamps to the look and feel and functionality of the platform. Removing some assets such as, LinkedIn Events (still not clear why that useful element was removed, perhaps  to become a paid for option in the near future), LinkedIn Answers – and LinkedIn Applications – to name a few.

However, whilst many of these elements changed, it’s not all doom and gloom. The new look and feel platform offers individuals the opportunity to develop a more ‘media rich’ profile experience. Also , the profile look is simpler and looks cleaner and definitely more 2013 – and the changes to the Company Profile, offers companies the opportunity to recreate keyword targeted, media rich landing pages to create a valuable and well optimised LinkedIn Company Profile.

LinkedIn – A Big Database

If you think about it – LinkedIn is a huge database, one which is increasing daily (stats reveal that 2 people sign up to LinkedIn every second!).  Therefore, the task of getting your profile visible to people who are searching is becoming increasingly difficult.

As with all huge databases, the ability to search for what you require and have relevant results delivered is critical. LinkedIn has search algorithms in place to help users find what they are looking for.

Understanding how to stand out and ensure that these algorithms can view and sort your Profile is key.  There are things that you can do to optimise your LinkedIn Profile for search and visibility – so let’s take a look at 5 Key Ways to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile’s visibility.

1              Getting to ‘All Star’ (previously 100% Complete) Pre the LinkedIn changes back in late 2012 – you may recall that when you created your profile you were presented with a ‘completeness score’.  Effectively, this ‘score’ – provided you with a gauge as to how ‘complete’ your LinkedIn Profile was – eg: Your Profile is 15% complete or Your Profile is 55% complete.

There are a number of facets within your Profile to complete before you reached the ultimate  100%.  Now with the new look and feel LinkedIn Profile – the same concept remains, however, the facets you need to complete to get your profile as complete as possible has changed slightly – and is now made up of the following:

• Your industry and location
• An up-to-date current position with description (please note that if you want your current position to align with the Company LinkedIn Profile that may already exist – be sure that you use the correct wording for the company name you work with – and to hyperlink your profile directly across to the LinkedIn Company Page – be sure to have ticked the ‘current position’ box.
• Two past positions
• Your education (again, this is what you choose to insert – you don’t have to give a running commentary from age 11).
• Your skills (min of 3)
• Profile photo (not the one of you over on Facebook enjoying a glass of wine with friends – but instead, your business persona).
• At least 50 connections.

The other change is the terminology. The words have changed from the easily understood, ‘100% Complete’ to ‘All Star’.  Not sure why they decided to change the terminology – and the new terms certainly remind us that the platform was founded in the US – however, we are where we are – and the new terminology applies.

To summarise – the % of completeness of your LinkedIn Profile sends a signal to the algorithms to favour your profile above those profiles which are less complete than yours.

So, the message is to ensure that you have completed the facets as outlined above – to get your LinkedIn Profile to ‘All Star’ status.

2              Connect to All Stars  - There is cause to believe that the ‘completeness theme’ continues with those that you connect with.  Our networks play a big influence on how visible we are on LinkedIn – and research has identified that when people are connected to other ‘All Stars’ – that this plays a part in influencing your own visibility.  So, spread the good word – and ensure that your colleagues and the contacts that you are connected with are all up to ‘All Star’ status – as this will help all of you.  This may influence who you connect with.

3              Connections - As I alluded to in point 2 above – our networks play a big part in our own visibility on LinkedIn.   To get to All Star status – you need to have at least 50 connections. However, research has shown that those with more connections gain more visibility.  Is it a case of connecting with all and everyone? One would hope that LinkedIn’s search algorithms were more intelligent than simply just working on a network reach perspective – however, at this time of writing – then there isn’t any evidence to show that being more targeted in who you connect with provides you with any search Brownie Points.  Of course, whilst the person you initially connect with may not seem to be directly relevant to you – remember they will have a large network – and many of those within their network could be really useful.

However,  I would suggest that you do keep in mind why you are on LinkedIn in the first place – and be as targeted as possible in who you connect with – but just ensure that you connect with a lot of people.  After all – the 1,2,3 layers of connection – very quickly get you into millions of peoples networks.  Therefore – if visibility is your aim – then currently, growing your connections is a key tactic to employ.

4              Keywords - As with any database searching – the search results returned do their best to match the search queries you are looking for.  Therefore, being a big database, the same applies with LinkedIn.

As with all ‘search’ principles, as users, we utilise ‘keywords’ when searching. Think about your own search habits. If you are looking for someone to provide a cat grooming service to your non pampered moggie – then you are likely to visit the mighty Google and type in just a few keyword terms such as, cat groomer, or even, cat groomer Guildford (adding a location).

Our search habits extend to social networks – and when searching on LinkedIn, again, we’ll utilise just a few keywords to find who or what we are looking for.

Of course, in order for your LinkedIn Profile to be returned in search results, you need to optimise your profile with relevant keywords.

Where to insert your keywords

Your LinkedIn Profile is limited to the amount of characters you can use in each section.  And whilst first and foremost you are writing to appeal and make sense to human beings reading your profile – be mindful that they won’t be able to find you if you don’t optimise your profile to become as visible as possible.

• Header   
  • The Header section is limited to 120 characters. This is one of the key areas to optimise as it’s the headline asset of your personal LinkedIn Profile. Currently, my profile is optimised around social media consultancy, training and author. I could optimise my profile for other areas of expertise, such as marketing consultancy, internal communication programs, business transformation programs etc – however, rather than my Headline trying to showcase everything I have done in my career – I am optimising to be found for what I want to be found for right now.  Be mindful that what you want to be found for may change – so do ensure your profile is working towards achieving your current objectives.
  • Summary
    • Here you get  2,000 characters to tell your story, which of course presents you with significant room to include relevant keywords when sharing your accomplishments.
    • Experience/Position Title
      • 100 characters to sum up your official title, and of course opportunity to share something more creative and include those relevant keywords.
      • Experience/Position Description
        • 2,000 characters to use keywords to sum up your role and your key accomplishments. Remember, you may wish to create your content in ‘word’ so that you can format it a little more than you can within LinkedIn. This way, it makes long pieces of text easier to scan and read online.
        • Skills & Expertise
          • You can list up to 50 areas of skills and expertise. And within each one you get to use 61 characters. Again, think about those all important keywords.
          • Status updates
            • You can include 700 characters within each status update – and there is currently no limit on how often you make an update.  However,  LinkedIn is nowhere near as fluid as a platform like Twitter, and so status updates stay around a lot longer. Therefore, be mindful of this. You may want to consider just one or two updates per day.  And remember, if you need to say more, you can add a hyperlink to a blog or article to continue the conversation.
            • Groups
              •  You are limited to joining 50 groups.  More on Groups in point 5 below.
              • Education/Degree
                • You have 100 characters to explain your degree and again, another opportunity to include relevant keyword phrases.
                • Education/Activities & Societies
                  • 500 characters to give an overview that can tie into your career.
                  • Education Description
                    • 1,000 characters where you can share an overview of what you have  studied and how your education is relevant to your career.
                    • Additional Info/Interests
                      • 1,000 characters where you can add more information about yourself – projects you’ve participated in etc. Again, keep it keyword relevant.
                      • Honours & Awards
                        •  1,000 characters to share any awards or achievements. It could be an award for best salesperson of the year, or customer service, or voted best blogger etc.

As you can ascertain from the above, there is quite a lot of equity within your LinkedIn Profile for you to showcase exactly what you want people to know about you. Remember, you are in control of the data you insert into your profile – and you can make it as keyword relevant as you require, dependent upon your specific objectives at the time. Of course, your objectives will change – and so you can tailor your profile accordingly.  You are in total control.

5              Groups - So, we mentioned that you can become a member of 50 Groups on LinkedIn – and you can also create your own Groups too.  Group are a great way of connecting with like-minded people in your industry – and you can leverage Groups to showcase your expertise and knowledge – becoming a ‘thought leader’ in your space.

The challenge with Groups is that there are just so many of them.   So which ones are the right ones for you?

Our advice is to first do your research. Search for Groups that you think you would be interested in – or indeed, look at your influential connections and you can see which Groups they are members of.

When you search Groups you will see that there are indications as to how active a Group is – eg: Very Active – or Active.  Plus, you will see that it provides you with some information about how many of your network are within the Group you are looking at.

And of course, LinkedIn will recommend Groups you may be interested in – based on the Groups you are in and the people you are connected to.

Research shows that the more Groups you belong to the more that boosts your visibility – however, you do need to be realistic about what is and isn’t manageable from a contribution perspective.

Creating your own Group

If you think there’s a gap that needs filling – or that it would be beneficial to start your own Group – then you can easily Create a Group – and decide whether that Group is open to all  on LinkedIn or is a closed group, by invitation only.

The objective as to why you are creating the Group in the first place will determine whether it’s open or closed – (it could be that you are creating a Group to manage an internal project for example – and therefore, you wouldn’t want that Group open to all on LinkedIn). Or it may be that you are developing a Group to attract leading lights in a particular field – and so you would want it to be open so that others could join the Group.

Fish Where the Fish Are

Of course, with Groups, we automatically think of the Groups that we should belong to – and align ourselves to Groups packed with people just like us.

If you are utilising LinkedIn for business development, generating leads and opening direct conversations with people – then you should definitely be considering the Groups where your potential target audience reside.  Where are they conversing?  You also need to be thinking about their needs and what you can bring to the conversation to engage with them – and get them to know you, like you trust – and ultimately think about doing business with you.

Within Groups – you can have direct discussions with other Group members. However, do be careful not to come across as too ‘spammy’ – Groups are moderated and usually have Group Rules to abide by. People don’t want to be ‘sold to consistently’ – within Groups – so instead, remember that you are part of a network – albeit a social one – and the rules of networking apply.  Build relationships first, be useful and purposeful, grow trust and then the referrals and opportunities will come.

So that’s just 5 ways you can be boosting your visibility on LinkedIn. 

Keep us posted on your stories with LinkedIn – how it’s working for you and any tips you’d can share with others.  After all – it’s networking!

Michelle Carvill is Founder and  Director of Carvill Creative, Online Visibility agency – covering social media, web optimisation and online marketing.  Co-author of social media book of the year – The Business of Being Social – A Practical Guide to Harnessing the Power of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for Business.

 

Director of Carvill Creative Michelle Carvill is one of the resident trainers at Business Training Made Simple in London. Michelle regularly trains candidates on how to leverage and understand social media from a business perspective.

With social media being an incredibly fast paced industry, having Michelle out there on a regular basis, talking to social media users, is of great value to us – the community mangers back in the Carvill Creative office. With Michelle reporting back to us on a weekly basis about her sessions, it helps us to keep our finger on the pulse and have an up to date understanding of the questions at large when it comes to social media.

This week we thought we’d give you the answers to the top 5 questions, posed to Michelle this month by the BTMS candidates.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask Michelle or our team of community managers – then get tweeting @carvillcreative or post on our Facebook timeline and we’ll get back to you ASAP. If you’re feeling generous you could give even give us a like as well!

 

Q – As a Facebook Page if someone posts to you – the post goes into a little box – rather than going directly onto your Facebook Wall / Feed.  Can you create settings so that anyone can post directly to your Facebook Wall / Feed?

A – Facebook only allows for posts to appear on Facebook Business timelines AFTER the page admin has approved the comment and made it visible. As a business page owner, you can make a post go live on your page by choosing from a number of settings. These settings can be found in your ‘Edit Page’ tab at the top of your screen, then into your ‘Activity Log’ tab and then once in there – look to your left hand navigation – there is a tab that says ‘posts by others’. Now choose your posts settings.

• Default allowed
• Highlighted on page
• Allowed on page
• Hidden from page

This is an interesting question and one that often comes up with clients when discussing privacy issues on a Facebook Business Page.

From a business perspective, many will be pleased to hear that they can effectively monitor what goes public on their timeline. However, what we’re still puzzled by – is that this makes little difference. Users are able to write whatever they like in a comment box that appears underneath any post made by the page itself. Whatever is written in the comment box goes live instantaneously – so why not have the same option with direct posting to the timeline?

What do you think? Should all comments and wall posts have the option to be monitored by a business page owner OR is that defeating the idea of Facebook – should people able to post freely and honestly about a brand? Tweet or Facebook us your opinion

 

Q. Recommendations on Facebook. Does this feature still exist and if so – how do you get them and encourage people to recommend?

A – Recommendations have changed slightly on Facebook. The old recommendation system used to allow users to basically review businesses and their products in a ‘trip advisor’ style. This was quite a useful function, living in a recommendation era it’s great for brands to be publically praised – and useful for consumers to see what others say about a service.

The new recommendation, works as a social plug-in within Facebook. Click here to view and install.

The plug-in helps people to find articles based on what their friends have liked on Facebook and shared on their timeline. When a Facebook user reads an article, a small pop-up shows up at the bottom of their screen, displaying the recommended articles and asking them to like your page. Recommendations are only based on content that friends have physically liked and shared in your app or on your website.

Just how the ‘Like’ button works now, when a person likes an article using the Recommendations Bar, a story is published back to their timeline into their recent activity and friends will see their recommendation in their news feed.

So in order to encourage people to recommend you – it’s pretty simple really, share good content!

 

Q. Facebook Cover shot – can you use animated gifs for the Facebook cover shot?

A - With the rollout of the new timeline from Facebook – we gained the impressive ‘cover shot’ feature. However there are some strict guidelines when it comes to what you can and can’t have in your cover shot – you can see the rules here*. In regards to animated gifs being permitted, we’re sorry to report that you can’t include them. If you try to upload a GIF to Facebook, a still image of the first frame will appear.

(*At the time of writing it appears that many cover shots break the guidelines. Many include telephone numbers, urls, direct call to actions – all which goes against the Facebook Covershot Guidelines – we haven’t seen any evidence that Facebook police this).

If you have a GIF image that is non-moving, you should have no problem uploading it to Facebook, although the quality may not be as good.

According to the Facebook Developers page, GIFs are one of many file types allowed for uploading to the platform. Other supported image file types include JPG, PNG, PSD, TIFF, JP2, IFF, WBMP and XBM images.

 

Q. Twitter – if you block someone – can they still see your profile but simply just not interact with you?

Answer -

• They cannot add your Twitter account to their lists.
• They cannot have their @replies or mentions show in your mentions tab (although these Tweets may still appear in search).
• They cannot follow you.
• They cannot see your profile picture on their profile page or in their timeline.

They will still be able to see your tweets if they navigate to your profile page (this includes tweets in lists). This is if your profile is public, the only way to stop this is to make your account protected!

We hope this has cleared up some social media queries – our blog is updated regularly with heaps of ‘how to’ social media advice. Stay tuned to our Facebook page and Tweets in order to get daily tips and advice on everything social!

 

Are you still wondering what Pinterest is and whether it’s right for your business?

Chances are, if you’re interested in generating website traffic and awareness – then it probably is!

So let’s take a closer look at Pinterest…(the tool for collecting and organising the things you love).

When it comes to reading content online, most of us tend to glaze over and switch off when confronted with big chunks of text; however, the same doesn’t apply to images – nothing grabs are our attention more quickly than an image or picture.

And Pinterest is very simply all about sharing visual content.  When Pinterest started gaining momentum – (a good couple of years ago now), their focus was around ‘collecting and organising things you love’ – and of course, as with all mass communication networks, businesses and brands have appropriated the platform – so that they too can share their stories, views and service offerings in a visually appealing way.

How does Pinterest work?

Once you’ve set up an account, (more on that later on in the post), then you can start creating your own ‘pin boards’ – so that you can collect images, visuals, videos etc – and literally, ‘pin them’ – to your board.

There doesn’t appear to be any limit to the amount of ‘pin boards’ you can create – so at Carvill Creative, we have a board for our blogs, things you may hear us say, books we enjoy etc – your boards can literally be about anything you want to collect and organise.

So, moving on from ‘collecting and organisation the things you love ‘– how can Pinterest help you from a business perspective? 

• Encourages Traffic – One of the main and most important advantages of Pinterest is Traffic! If you have any blogs that you want to get more eyeballs to, then this is the great way to get the ball rolling.

You can showcase anything you want from new products to your latest blog, but in order to get the best reaction make sure you know what it is your audience are interested in!

Key tip is that whenever possible – include links back to your website and feature landing pages within your pins, in order to drive traffic back to your website.

• Advertise your business – by using the ‘follow’ or ‘pin it’ button – you are encouraging your customers and fans to use and ‘pin’ your products on their Pinterest boards.  Again, this opens up your products and services to new audiences.  If someone ‘pins’ your blog post – or latest news letter – then effectively they are supporting your ‘pin’ and the content that you’re sharing.

This is the perfect way for brands to showcase their products and services and therefore get the word out in a different way – where they are able to visually express (pin) things they enjoy and share them with others.

• Showcase your business’ personality

 Pinterest is a great opportunity to give people a sneak peek into your business/brand’s personality.

You can make the most out of your ‘pin board’ to showcase your employees and even life in the office – this gives your audience a great picture as to what you’re about. Letting people in behind the scenes also makes you appear more personable – it will encourage credibility and people will feel like they know and trust you that little bit more.

• Build a following

Pinterest is also a great way to build a targeted community – however, be aware that it may take more time than on other social media sites, even if you are very active.

As with anything online – ‘Content Is King’ – if you create compelling content and in this case, compelling images, you’ll find that people want to follow you. They’ll tell their friends and colleagues about you and in return, your following will grow.

• Customer competitions

Competitions are a great way to encourage engagement on any social media platform. With Pinterest – you can create picture competitions. Let your fans know what the prize is and ask them to take a picture and share it to win the competition.

Ask your fans to pin the pictures onto their pinboards, they can then send you the link to their picture, and then all you have to do is come up with a means of deciding the best picture. This tactic is a great way to encourage interaction to your ‘pinboard’ and interaction with your fans!

Setting up your Pinterest account and Boards

If you’re interested in setting up an account then you’ll want to get started as soon as possible! It wasn’t until recently that Pinterest introduced ‘Business Accounts’, there are 2 ways to set this up: 1) If you have already been using Pinterest on a personal account, you can easily convert your account to a business one or 2) You can create a completely new account.

Changing your Pinterest page from a personal account to a business account is simple:

• Visit pinterest.com/business/convert to start. You’ll need to be logged into your existing personal account.

• Fill out all the details and profile information for your business page – the beauty of converting to a business account is that business accounts display a verification badge, and enable you to add buttons and widgets to your website. Do note – Pinterest also advises you of their set of terms of service.

• Last but not least, you will have to agree to the Business Terms of Service agreement and privacy policy.

• Once you done the form filling, simply click ‘convert’ and Pinterest will do the rest for you!

 

To create a new business account from scratch: you can sign up for a new business account by clicking here http://business.pinterest.com/

Simply click the button ‘Join as a Business’ and you will go through a similar process except this time, you will get the chance to choose a new username!

 

Your next big task is setting up your ‘Pinboard’

A person’s Pinterest board can be as varied as the individual who populates them. The more you use Pinterest, the more things you’ll find to pin, and that often means creating new boards.

These ‘pinboards’ are the categories for which the content you share will be located. For a business, consider the key things your customers are looking for, whether it is product-based, useful websites, technology, and so on. Once you’ve figured that out you can then go on to creating your ‘pinboard.’ Here’s how:

• Sign in to your Pinterest account and click the ‘Create a Board’ option in the top right hand corner.

• When prompted, you will need to enter to basic info about your board such as name, category, and who can pin on this board – then click ‘Create Board.’

• Next you will need to Name your board – the trick is to get the balance between both clever and clear – so people understand what they can find on the board, whilst also encouraging engagement!

• Then you’ll need to choose your Pinterest Category – this is what people use to browse so be sure to choose a category that accurately describes your board – if you’re not happy with the name remember you can always come back and change this later.

How to Pin- It!

A pin starts with an image or video that you choose to add to Pinterest. You can add a pin from a website using the ‘Pin it’ bookmarklet or upload an image from your computer. Any pin on Pinterest can be repinned, and all pins link back to their source.

Here’s how to use and get the ‘Pin It’ button:

The ‘Pin it’ button should appear in the Pinterest toolbar and is used as an easy way to pin images directly to your Pinterest boards in just a few seconds. It lets you grab the image directly from a website and straight to your Pinterest board without having to sign in! Here’s how you go about getting ‘pinning’ enabled:

• In order to download the toolbar you need to firstly log into your Pinterest account as usual and find the “About” menu section in the upper right hand corner of the page.

• Select the ‘Pin it’ button on the second row – this will then take you to a new page.

• Scroll down and then simply click ‘Install Now’ to add it to your bookmarks bar above—then click the bookmarklet whenever you see an image or video you want to pin!

• The Pin It Button for Chrome lets you pin things from around the web.

• Once installed, you can use the ‘pin It’ button to pin almost any photo / blog you come across while surfing the Internet in just a matter of seconds. And away you go! You also have the option of uploading a picture from your computer where you can pin a JPG, PNG or GIF image files. You can also pin high resolution images and videos.

Pinning on the go

One of the most popular ways to ‘pin’ is through a mobile or handheld device, available for your Android smartphone and tablet. In order to get Pinterest on your mobile you need to firstly download the app. Once you’ve done that you can then get started with creating pins on your mobile. Here’s how:

• Pins can be created directly from your mobile or tablet. All you need do is click on ‘create pin’ from the main screen of the Pinterest App.

• Alternatively – If you want to create a pin directly from the web, then you must tap on your browsers share button and then select ‘create pin.’

• Next – select the photo you wish to pin and choose its details and its description – along with the board you want it to be in.

• When it comes to viewing boards and pins with the Pinterest app – all you need to do is simply tap on the pin to view its details – you are then given the option to re-pin it, like it or leave a comment.

Pinterest is great when you’re pinning in the right way! Keep in mind the following tips whilst actively pinning, in order to get the most of this clever new platform.

• Know your audience- This is most important as you need to know what best attracts your audience to your pin board and what they like to share – keeping up the engagement and continually driving traffic to your page.

• Be yourself – it’s good to pin things that express who you are and what your business is about, this is more important than the number of followers you have!

• Be current- social sharing is an extremely fast moving medium. Topics and fashions come into and go out of popularity very quickly. Therefore make sure that your images and videos posted reflect what your business’s potential customers are talking about.

Encouraging Pinterest users to get ‘pinning’ your content.

Now that you’ve done some pinning yourself and shared content belonging to other businesses, blogs and websites – you should start focusing  your energy on making sure that your own content is getting pinned – encouraging people to share your images, blogs and videos as much as possible.

Why?

Because the more people that pin and share your content, the more exposure, traffic and advertising your business gets.

If people don’t know that you have a presence on Pinterest, they are unlikely to share your content.

The most straightforward way to encourage people to pin your content to their own Pinterest boards is to:

• Ensure that all your content is ‘pinnable.’

Sounds simple enough!

The best way to do this is feature a ‘pin it’ button on your site – make sure it features next to blog posts and images that you want people to share. This blog post from Hubspot should give you some instructions on how to get Pinterest widgets and buttons directly onto your website.

Keep in mind – Pinterest is about the image being shared. The images that get pinned need to be good, as your brand is reflected by the quality of the images that you have put up. Make sure photos are clearly illustrated and on brand.

Shhh… Be aware that private pin boards are available on Pinterest. These differ from the original pin boards that we have been discussing throughout the blog post. Firstly you are only allowed up to THREE private pin boards at any one time, whereas as you may have an UNLIMITED amount of  original pinboards (as noted above). These private boards will not show up anywhere on Pinterest – they can be used for adding pins that you wish to be invisible within category sections.

*Note If you are lucky enough to get invited to someone else’s secret board then the rules are different – feel free to accept as many invites as you like because these do NOT count towards your three board limit.

Remember pinteresters (we may have made that word up) – ‘A picture can be worth 1000 words’.

Perhaps it’s time for your business to show some interest in Pinterest!

Happy Pinning!

Liked this blog? Join in the conversation on Twitter and stay updated with our tips and how to advice on our Facebook Page. You can follow us on LinkedIn too.

Introducing the newest addition to the Twitter Family – we give you…Twitter Vine!

Vine is a 6 second video app that works alongside Twitter – it can be used to capture and share what people are seeing and showcasing in a short stop-go animation.

Remember when Twitter launched and we were flummoxed as to how we were going to say what we needed to in just 140 characters.  Well now, via video, they’re challenging us to just 6 seconds.

 

Creating a Vine

The process itself is actually very simple and doesn’t require any editing. All you need do is download the app – and follow the simple steps to connect it to a relevant Twitter account.  You’ll see those of your followers already on Vine and you can connect with them via this channel too.

Once live and ready to use, to create a Vine simply hold your finger to the screen to record and remove it to stop.  Pretty simple. The short clips are then threaded together in a continuous video – collectively limited to just 6 seconds.

With Vine videos only running to a maximum of 6 seconds, this should (we say should) help to inspire creativity in businesses, giving the masses the chance to showcase brands and products in an intense time frame.

However, with just 6 seconds, you’re going to have to rise to the challenge by really getting stuck in creatively if you want to make this platform work. Getting the most out of that six second time frame is of upmost importance, being savvy with your content and keeping things simple should help you to do that.

Remember that this isn’t YouTube – subjects that require explanation and guidance should remain firmly in the company of YouTube channels.

Internationally known fashion brand Levi’s have already fallen victim to this error by posting a Vine Video that really belonged on their YouTube channel. The subject they were posting about needed far more explanation than just 6 seconds and as a result its message was unclear to viewers.

Only 2 weeks ago Twitter Vine shared 100,000 videos in one weekend thanks to New York Fashion Week. This shows how much of an impact Vine has already had on social media –but it serves a whole new purpose that businesses will need to get to grips with in order to make it successful for them.

So before you jump in, take a look at our Tips and Ideas on how to use Vine for business:

• Events – Covering major events is a great use of Vine- it’s also an easy way for companies to release a sneak peak in the run up to the event. A teaser will get people talking around a hashtag and is a great way to build momentum. When sharing content from events, creativity is key! You want to make sure you’re giving away a sneak preview to your event but not giving away too much! A 6 second limitation should help with that!
• New Product Launch - Use Vine to demonstrate a new product launch, service or feature. It’s all very well showing pictures of the new product or written text saying what that product is, but nothing does a product justice more than seeing it in action for real or through a video.
• Customer Engagement - One of the greatest aspects of Vine is how powerful it is when it comes to customer engagement. The challenge for brands will be to find ways to create something genuinely compelling and engaging within the constraints of the format – that is engaging and not irritating to viewers. It’s a great way to get your audience’s attention allowing you to use emotional appeal in your video advertisements, a major advantage over any text-based advertisements!
• Testimonials - A picture can be worth 1000 words and a quick 6 seconds of happy faces ‘see our customers smile’ – or one word snapshots of what they think of your product or service could be pretty engaging.
• Brand Awareness - Vine is a great way showcase the personality of your business – showcasing insight into what  you’re about – your views, your ‘why’.
• A way to meet the team - Introducing your followers to your team. Whether you’re giving an office tour, interviewing employees, or showing what it is like to be in the office, viewers will appreciate the chance to get to know you a bit better. By letting your followers know who you are, it connects on a human rather than ‘corporate’ level -e making your business more trustworthy and tangible.

As with all social media activity from a business perspective, don’t just dive in without thinking.

Give yourself time to think about the point you want to get across, you have only 6 seconds so choose your time wisely and keep it focused and importantly – creative.

Happy Vining…

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of marketing strategy and online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Want to talk to the team at Carvill Creative about your social media activity or training needs? We’re happy to chat, so simply ‘get in touch’.

Finally, why not download our useful Social Media Marketing Planner and Marketing Plan. They’re totally free to download and use.

Not so long ago – my colleague, friend and co-author, @DavidTaylor kindly created a Guest Blog sharing insights related to effective media relations and brand protection. Media Relations and Brand Protection in a Social Media Age.

Being prepared for any kick back on social media is now critical. 

And yet, organisations often go about sending communications to their audiences without considering the question – ‘Is this communication likely to get any
‘kick back’ in the social media space and if so what ‘lines do we take’.  Seems simple enough – but let’s just break this down:

1. The social media communication channels require a watchful eye and speed to response. Therefore, you’d need to ‘man up’ the resources for watching, listening and responding during.  If you know you are expecting some recourse – then you’d be watching and listening to what’s happening and responding as quickly as possible.
2.  How to respond? What are the official ‘lines to take’?  Have you got some key personnel on hand to act as the ‘Press Officer’ into the social media community team so that they can a direct link to be able to query any specific issues?  Or have you pre-prepared official statements from the CEO (or other relevant responses) – so that you have questions to answers, or responses to kick back from an official source.

Recently, I was witness to a campaign where social wasn’t considered – and without naming names or going into too much detail – here’s what happened.

Case Study:

Company A needed to communicate a change in their policy to their audience (about 60,000 people). The changes to the policy were quite complex and could easily have been misconstrued.

A rather lengthy (as it had to be due to sector regulations) was communicated via mail to their audience. With the call to action to call if there were any questions.  The call support team were briefed in to deal with any questions.

The mailer hit.

The social media community management team didn’t know anything about it!

Kickback on Twitter and Facebook (usual places people use for complaints, comments etc) started happening. Lots of anger was vented at the changes.

The social media community management team very quickly realised that these were not one offs and quickly realised,  due to the scale of kick back, there was clearly some mass communication that had hit.

The team dealt with it in a professional way – and very quickly got to grips with the bigger picture.

Created a direct line of comms into the senior leadership team so they too were briefed in on ‘lines to take’ – bringing clarity to some of the elements that had clearly been misconstrued and pacifying an angry audience.

BE PREPARED

The social media team – front line voice of the business, were not made aware of the communication.

We see this happening all the time – lack of ‘joined up’ communications leads to confusion, frustration and  in a social and transparent space – can make an organisation look plain stupid.

Had they been informed – they would have been prepared with lines to take, knowledge about the likely questions to respond to.

 

• KEY LESSONS
• Communications have to be joined up.  It’s as bad as sending out a marketing promotion and not telling the front line telesales team about it. When someone calls talking about the promotion – the telesales person is left thinking ‘I don’t know anything about this’.  Poor.
• If you are sharing key news – be sure that everyone who needs to know about it, knows about it.
• Ask the question – do we expect any ‘kick back’ on this – and if so – prepare ‘lines to take’.
• Ensure that front line team have a direct link into senior comms/management so that they can quickly access any  specific information they may require.

 

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of marketing strategy and online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Want to talk to the team at Carvill Creative about your social media activity or training needs? We’re happy to chat, so simply ‘get in touch’.

Finally, why not download our useful Social Media Marketing Planner and Marketing Plan. They’re totally free to download and use.

 

You’ve taken the time to establish your social media platforms, made some friends and re-tweeted quite a few times.  Now what?  As time ticks on your social media channels may become just another routine for you and just another quick scan for visitors.  Below are 7 quick and easy tips that you can use today to spruce up your social media life

Change your Gravitar and profile pictures.

Nothing says a “new you” like a new look.  By switching up your online pictures you are refreshing your image online and increasing the chance of getting people to click to see what else is new

 

 

Add a video or infographic to your site.

The visual aspects of social media are not going anywhere.  Change up your normal text-based interactions with something more aesthetically pleasing.  With easily accessible do-it-yourself sites, adding a visual aid to your repertoire may be simpler than you think.

Start asking questions.

People love talking about themselves.  This is why we tweet and post in the first place isn’t it, to promote ourselves, business and brand?  Turn this fact on its side by asking your followers what’s new with them.  What’s trending in their current world?  What are they struggling with?  All it takes is a question to get the conversations (and traffic) flowing

Update your bio and portfolio links.

It’s a wonderful thing if you’ve been too busy to update your portfolio with all of the new work you’ve been doing.  But a portfolio that showcases your latest project from 2007 screams stale.  Take some time semiannually to show the world how current your workflow actually is, highlighting new skills, clients and growth.

Show off a different side of your personality.

Being business focused is great, but it is so important to humanize your social media accounts so that others can connect with you on a personal level.  Try sharing your weekend plans or cracking an (appropriate) joke once in a while to breathe some new life into your pages

Branch out.

Chances are that as time has progressed, so have your interests.  What once was your niche audience might now be trickling into different directions.  Devote some of your social media time to making those new connections you’ve been thinking about.  Add value by adding your input into discussions and forums, leaving not only an impression but a link back to you.

Limit yourself.

The key words for this article were quick and easy, and if you’ve read this far then chances are you really are looking for some simple social media practices.  Stay true to your aspirations by allotting a certain amount of time to social media each day (say 60 minutes max) and stick to it.  When the alarm rings, commit to logging off and get back to work because as important as promoting your brand is, building it will always rank higher.

What other ways can you refresh your social media?  Share your thoughts here!

About the Author: Kelly Gregorio writes about relevant topics that affect small businesses while working at Merchant Resources International, a merchant advance cash provider for over 10,000 small businesses. You can read her daily blog at http://www.cashprior.com/blog.

 

Last September I ran a blogging course for one of our clients.

They’re a firm of accountants based in the City – and they’re the type of practice that’s always prided itself on harnessing technology to keep one step ahead.

Whilst many accounting practices don’t have any blogs associated to their website – this particular practice have three blogs.

Why three blogs?

Well, they have a number of clients and therefore, experience and expertise in understanding their needs in a particular sector. Those sectors focus around:

• Restaurants & Catering
• Artist and Galleries
• Property -  Management / Investment / Development

There’s nothing unusual about these sectors – however, rather than endeavour to just push ‘Accountancy’ news into all of these audiences – they take a targeted approach – providing relevant content for relevant audiences.

Of course – blogging works best when your activity is consistent, regular and purposeful.  This means that if you commit to blogging every day or twice a week (as my client has) – then effectively, you’ve got to feed your blog with relevant and purposeful content.

As any busy partner or business person will concur with – great content doesn’t just happen. It takes time to create – and without effective planning, those well intentioned blogging schedules get further and further behind.

During the workshop we covered the following:

• What blogging is and why it’s important.
• How to blog –
  • writing for the web
  •  and creating content that compels others to share it, comment on it, amplify it.
  • The art of compelling headlines
  • Creating a blogging system
    • Editor
    • Blogging team
    • Setting clear objectives and deadlines
    • Creating a content calendar (seasonal elements, topical elements)

Each delegate (and there were 7 that originally nominated to be part of the Blogging team to learn about blogging and regularly create content – there are now more!), then had to create their own headlines and commit to creating two articles within a specific deadline.

This activity meant that immediately following the workshop, they had 14 blog post titles ready for creation.

The blogging team didn’t disappoint – and content has been rolling into their three blogs ever since in a consistent, newsworthy and conversational manner.

And it is content that is proving to be far more compelling than the drier news often shared via ‘subscription’ accountancy feeds.

How they achieved this?

• They appointed an Editor – who brilliantly takes a very responsible role and actually ensures everyone stays on track (a fundamental taskmaster)
• They meet at least monthly to discuss topics, seasonality and brainstorm content ideas (videos, case studies, testimonials, client reviews are now all in the forthcoming pipeline).
• They showcase their success back to the Partners and rest of the team to evidence results and impact.
• They also use their blog posts as key content within their monthly newsletters – showcasing the rich mix of expertise and ‘voice’ of the practice via that medium too.
• They’ve made each blog shareable via social media channels by including, Share buttons on each post.  This enables those reading the posts to share into new audiences to amplify reach significantly.  And of course, this unique and authentic content gives the practice compelling content to share into their social media channels too.

The results so far:

In just a couple of months traffic has skyrocketed to their blogs (an increase of 383% comparing pre blogging stats to November – just two months into blogging) and therefore, their website. And it’s relevant and targeted traffic.

They’ve measured reach of their content using both Analytics and other tools – and the impressions are staggering – literally tens of thousands of people have interacted with their content in one way or another.

The blogging team has grown – more of the team see how those blogging enjoy sharing their expertise and experiences.

The Partners recently introduced a Social Media Training Workshop for the entire practice – as evidence of impact from their blogging activity has whetted their appetite to explore social media channels more widely.

Grant Pierrus, who manages Social Media and Blogging Activity for the Practice says…

Over the past few years I’ve been bombarded by success stories of companies who have been using social media effectively.  Driving up their sales and thought leadership amongst their online audiences.  I knew that if we planned and executed a well thought out and integrated social marketing plan we would experience similar results.

As Michelle has mentioned, we created a blogging team. Our professional staff knows their stuff, and I wanted to share this knowledge with our online audience and give the Westbury brand a voice.  Our biggest challenge was getting our team to change their perspective and think about the sort of content that our audience want to read instead of us deciding what they should be reading, Michelle’s excellent training helped with this.

We have been blogging consistently for a few months and the results are phenomenal.  Website traffic has increased, enquiries have increased and of course, we have quite a few new clients too!

So, it’s a fact – blogging works.

If you are looking to integrate a blog or set up a blogging team and need training – then simply get in touch.  We’d be delighted to help you too.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

 

 

Whether you are publishing a blog, promoting an event or other marketing activity – be sure that you
make your communications count.  Check these 8 publishing basics before hitting the ‘send’ button.

1.  Spell Check. The quickest way to lose credibility is to share content peppered with typos. Check your spelling and grammar. There are apps such as Grammarly which can help if you struggle.
2.  Web Friendly Content. People read differently online to how they read offline text. It’s difficult to read bulky paragraphs of text online so be sure to keep your sentences short and include bullet points and links where possible to highlight key points and steer the reader to where you want them to go / what you want them to do.
3.  Call to Action. Have you told your audience what you want them to do? Make your intentions clear from the start. If you are inviting people to an event, or need them to do something – get the ‘action’ in right at the beginning of your content. This way they don’t have to read the whole page to understand what’s being offered and what you want them to do.
4.  Does your Headline / Subject Line explain the proposition?  Check that your Headline/Subject clearly explains what’s on offer. Often audiences don’t read beyond the headline – so be sure you capture attention and sell the proposition from the start.
5.  Is your content Keyword Optimised? Make sure you are leveraging keywords in your Headline/ Subject Line and where relevant throughout your content. (Work on a 4% content to keyword ratio).
6.  Are the Links / Processes Working?  If you have included links to other pages – then be sure to check that links are working and active. If you’re including a process, for example, if you are sending readers to a landing page to download a guide – then check that the download, data capture mechanisms work seamlessly. Remember that in Twitter and LinkedIn you are limited to the amount of characters that can be published – so be sure that any links aren’t going to get ‘cut off’ at the end.
7.  Are you sending communications to a relevant audience?  The most successful marketing activities are those which are targeted effectively. Be sure that you understand your audience and target your communications accordingly.
8.  Have you included contact details? Whilst the call to action for your audience may be clear – some may have questions. Be sure you provide a ‘contact us’ option – whether it’s an email address or telephone number – somewhere where those with questions can very simply get in touch.

Being a regular blogger, blogging for around 5 years now – I’m always surprised to find that a huge proportion of businesses and websites I come across don’t have any blogging presence.

In an age where 76% of consumers search for products and services online via search engines and social media platforms, (just think about your own consumer behaviour and what you do when looking for a new product or service), then being ‘visible’ online is now business critical.

Having a website presence is one thing. However, in order for you to ensure your website doesn’t become a ‘billboard in the desert’ (as 40% of all UK websites are and received zero, yes, zero, traffic!), then you have to work at driving online visibility.

There are a number of ways to assist your online visibility – here are some of the key ones:

SEO (search engine optimisation) –  I’m not going to get into detail about SEO – however, enough to say that there are two key elements to SEO,  1) ‘on page’ – which relates to the content on your website, meta, site structure, navigation etc and ensuring all that is optimised.  And then, 2) ‘off page’ – which is the far more labour intensive means of growing credible and relevant ‘back links’ to your website.

The overall objective is to ensure that when someone types in those all important keywords when searching for a product or service eg:  ‘forensic accountant London’ – then you are visible on Page 1 of the search results (ideally in the top 3 organic search results – [after all, do you look beyond those or switch to Page 2 of search results?]).

Online advertising – When someone types in those all important keywords eg: ‘social media consultant London’ – you are paying to top the bill. You are bidding on keywords so that you become visible in the sponsored links. Again, ideally you want to dominate the sponsored listings – so that you have more chance of being ‘clicked’ on.  Results show that the top 3 positions receive the most traffic from sponsored activity.

Social Media Networks – Rather than putting all your eggs into one ‘online’ basket and simply having your website presence being the main means for audiences to find out about your business and services – now you can leverage a plethora of social networks to create a broader online presence.

Not only do social networks provide you with more opportunity to grow a presence online – but they also enable you to target specific people, influencers etc – and talk and converse and provide insight into what you and your business are really about.  This fundamentally enables you to showcase what you do for others via case studies, testimonials, track conversations, grow thought leadership by sharing opinion and expertise, grow fans and advocates who spread the word for you (to name but a few of the many uses of social).

Of course – the challenge with ‘Social’ is that you have to put something ‘out’ (share it) in order to attract people ‘in’.

Unlike advertising or optimising – social is the place whereby you ‘earn’ attention by the nature of what you share.

Therefore, you need to have something ‘sharable’ – and a method to consistently and simply share those all important insights into you, your business and your products and services.

This is where ‘blogging’ comes into play.

A blog, in my humble opinion, is a MUST for every website – and yes, I believe EVERY website, even those focusing solely on ‘ecommerce’.

The blog is the ‘mouthpiece’ for the business and brand. This is the place where you can share more than you can say on Twitter or Facebook – and of course,  provides you with unique, purposeful and relevant content to share on those social networks too.

Fundamentally, social isn’t about direct sales, it’s about getting people to ‘know you, like you, trust you, talk about you – and ultimately do business with you’.

In order to grow this relationship and get people to know, like and trust you – you’ve got to provide content that is useful, purposeful, authentic and from the heart of your business – so that you ‘earn’ attention.

Your Blog is your Broadcast Station

Your blog is indeed your broadcast station. Everything the business wants to share, believes in, has done for others, people get excited about etc – can be shared via your blog.  And of course – where does that blog sit? – on your website.

• When people visit your website they see your blog (particularly if you’re smart and have it visible on the home page). They see that you’re alive and that you have opinions, advice, testimonials, case studies, view points, expertise, authority, a personality etc.
• When people read your blog, they get pulled back to your website. Where they can explore more blogs or products or services or hit the call to action you included in your blog to encourage them to get more involved with your business by subscribing to your blog or downloading your latest Social Media or Marketing guide etc.

It’s the perfect ‘engagement’ and ‘broadcast’ tool.  It works beautifully for social media – as it gives you something to share – and it’s an authentic view on you and your business.

If a business isn’t blogging – then they don’t have much to say.  And in a world where being ‘vocal’ matters – then blogging assists with your online visibility.

Ok, so if we dedicate time and resource to blogging regularly – what’s the ROI?

At Carvill Creative we keep a track of all enquiries – whether they come via our online ‘Get in touch’ form or via phone or email.

Out of submissions from the last three months – 50% were via Google Search and 50% said:

I can confirm that from those that contacted us via seeing our blog – 60% have so far translated into new business compared to just 18% of those that made queries via Google Search.

Also – a client, Westbury Accountants – grew traffic to their site 386% when they picked up their blogging activity.  You can read their Blogging for Success Case Study here.

My questions to you are:

• If you’re not blogging – why not?  If it’s a resource thing – then work with a company like Carvill Creative where we either train you and your team to blog internally (as we did with Westbury) or indeed we learn about your organisation and personality and regularly create content for your blogs.
• If you have a blog – how regularly are you blogging and are you measuring its effectiveness? Do you track where leads come from, do you monitor Analytics on your website to review traffic via your blog?

Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Focus on the end in mind. You’ll find lots of tips and tactics for getting started with blogging here in our Blogging Masterclass in A Blog Post article – and of course, if you want to start a blog and don’t know where to start – get in touch. We’d be delighted to get you blogging.

 

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of marketing strategy and online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Want to talk to the team at Carvill Creative about your social media activity or training needs? We’re happy to chat, so simply ‘get in touch’.

Finally, why not download our useful Social Media Marketing Planner and Marketing Plan. They’re totally free to download and use.

Ok – 2013 is here – and we’re now 5 years on from the major doom and gloom of the credit crunch.

And let me tell you – whilst the economic climate is by no means ‘booming’ – the sentiment of business people I have met over the past months is definitely far more positive.

I was privileged to be at the StartUp Business Awards in December – and what a refreshing ‘pick me up’ – that was. (Not that I personally need any pick me ups as I’m eternally optimistic).

I spoke to a number of business people, from all walks of life – and generally the sentiment was the same.

Business is good and people are excited and passionate about what the year ahead will bring.

I’ve written about this before, back in 2008 and 2010 – but I’m reiterating it again.  Because I believe it’s fundamentally important.

Optimism, passion and energy are really key fundamental success factors we need to personally harness as, when you think about it – it’s energy and enthusiasm that keeps us all going – the sense of purpose that motors us on.

So regardless as to whether you’re a business owner, budding entrepreneur or CEO – it’s important to remain passionate and positive  about business – and it’s hugely important to make time for yourself to restore those all important energy levels.

Focusing on the negative is a self fulfilling prophecy – therefore, my advice to self and others is to focus on spreading optimism.  After all – optimism is infectious.

Here’s my tried and test guide for helping you to combat the blues and stay positive, focused and energised throughout 2013.

1. Avoid the ‘energy vampires’.  You know who they are – the people that ‘suck’ the life out of you.   Avoid these ‘vampires’ as much as possible.  If you have to be around them be sure to counteract their negativity with positivity.  You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.
2. Hang out with Energy  Boosters.  Counterbalance the ‘energy vampires’ by being around ‘energy boosters’. These are people that really excite and inspire you and get you enthused and positive about what you do.  They ooze energy and when ‘boosters’ get together – energy is shared – and it generates more energy so everyone comes away feeling ready for anything.  You know who these people are – so spend more time in their presence. And be sure to make time to find more ‘boosters’.  Attend the odd face to face networking event, go to seminars that interest you, book signings, lectures, webinars etc – go where the people who influence or inspire you are – and get immersed.
3. Get fit – physically (and mentally).   Just how much better do you feel when you are fit and well. I have to say that for a number of reasons, I had to stop exercising regularly for a short period – and boy did it take its toll.   My advice is to build exercise into your life – full stop. It’s not an optional extra – it’s a necessity.  Do whatever it takes to stay active and well. Zumba classes, yoga, pilates, get outside for a run/jog/walk – go for a swim or get down to the gym.  Even if it’s just simply getting outside for a walk. Get out, get some fresh air and do something. Ideally every day.  When my daughter wants to go for a bike ride – I get my trainers on – and she’s a great pacer.  Even if it’s only 20 minutes. You’ll feel a whole lot better.  Physically and mentally.
4. Me time - get into the habit of making some ‘me time’.  There’s nothing clever about working and worrying 24 hours a day.  You’ll burn out, lose momentum, become low and energy and enthusiasm will slip far from your grasp.  Don’t let yourself get to that stage.  Take ‘me time’ – and by this I mean doing whatever it takes to ‘recharge your batteries’.  Whether it’s a long walk, training for a marathon, yoga, meditation, hanging out with the children, feeding the ducks, dog walks, listening to music, dancing, going down the gym, reading a book etc - whatever it takes – be sure you do some of it regularly.   I recommend at least 1 hour of ‘me time’ a day.  Sounds like it should be simple to fit in just 1 hour a day – but you’ll find that it isn’t.  So start with setting 1 hour as your benchmark – and see how you go.
5. Learn to say NO when you need to.  Being passionate and enthusiastic has its downfalls too. You can be so keen to get involved in ‘everything’ that before you know it  you’ve tied yourself in a number of impossible knots. We’ve all been there – double diary bookings, working weekends, missing out on those all important ‘me time’ sessions because you’re up to your eyeballs.  Saying NO when you need to is also about remaining focused on what’s important.   Be sure you are in charge of your time management. If you don’t want to say ‘No’ then perhaps suggest a later date you can get involved. It’s tricky – but definitely worth mastering.

So that’s it – simple eh – keep optimistic, energised, enthused and focused on what you want to achieve in 2013.  At the end of the day it’s you that matters – with your mental and physical energy levels in tip top condition, that’s what’s really going to help you stand out in a crowd and cope with challenges that come your way!

For more social media, marketing news, views, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my blog and don’t forget to follow my tweetings on Twitter

Here’s to an energetic, happy and successful 2013!  It’s going to be a great year for sure.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing, social media consultancy, social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

 

Whilst it is reported that there are over 1bn Facebook users- there are still many local businesses without a Facebook business page.

A recent Facebook update; ‘Facebook Nearby’ – gives businesses even more of a reason to sign onto the Facebook network and create their very own Facebook Business Page to keep them on the map and aid visibility.

Facebooks’ nearby tab was originally used in personal profiles showing people where their friends’ had ‘checked in.’

Facebook has now built on this app turning it into a business local search engine where you can discover places and local businesses nearby. Searches can be done using either a business name or category – such as coffee shop, restaurants, bars etc.

At the moment this is only available on Facebook mobile phone apps due to Facebook wanting to engage on a deeper level with their fans via mobile as they believe it will offer a ‘word of mouth at scale.’

The update was designed to make the Facebook mobile app a go-to source for finding out local information in each of the selected categories.

This is a new marketing opportunity that you don’t want to miss out on. It enables you to:

 

1. Put your businesses face onto the map- offering search and discovery of any other local businesses in the area.

 

2. Lets you know where friends and fans are and the local businesses they have checked into.

 

3. Offers a places category- where you are able to search for places in different categories such as nearby, restaurants, nightlife, outdoors, shopping etc.

 

4. Useful marketing resource to motivate other Facebook users- through engagement you can discover what others think of local businesses.

 

5. Measure and rate a business through a 5 star ranking system where the businesses that have been ranked the highest and have the higher levels of engagement are more likely to appear first in Facebook’s search filters.

 

6. Users also have the option to like, call and get directions for the business they want to connect with- Straight from their mobile.

 

Facebook’s ‘Nearby’ search engine will deliver results from local Business Page – so remember, if you don’t have a page- You won’t show up!

Get your business noticed and create your Facebook business page now! See our useful guide to help get your Facebook Business Page started.

 

 

 

 

This post is kindly brought to you via our very first ‘Guest Blogger’ – David Taylor. If you are part of the social and marketing world and are interested in Guest Blogging on the Carvill Creative blog – simply email us.

For years, brands and organisations have invested as much time protecting themselves in the media as they have promoting themselves. Press offices, spin doctors and PR consultants have all worked to form a protective layer around companies when dealing with the press.

Indeed, during my time in the press offices of both London Transport (now TFL) and the Millennium Dome, we as media relations professionals were often called upon to kill off the misleading or incorrect stories which inevitably arose when journalists were looking for a juicy headline or a story they could use to kick the Government.

In addition, there are times, particularly in large consumer-facing organisations, that you will make mistakes and have to face up to both the consequences and the press. As a result, we frequently prepared ‘lines to take’ with the media once we knew that there was likely to be a problem.

As the Northern Line press officer back in the 1990s, this was a common occurrence! The trains were then almost 40 years old and showing their age. There were frequent problems with overheating and we knew that the Unions were briefing the Evening Standard. So we had to be prepared once stories broke. We did this by going through all the likely scenarios, figuring out the questions the press may ask us, speaking to the line controllers and preparing well-thought out responses. These were then written down and handed out to all media relations officers – whether they were based in the office or on call.

The final element of media relations was of course monitoring what was being said in the press to ensure that the brand was not harmed. Press cuttings services, media monitoring and scanning of papers were commonplace to prevent negative stories (and indeed positive ones too) going unnoticed.

So what has this got to do with social media? Well, as it happens – a huge amount.

Exactly the same principles apply whether you have a blog, Facebook Page or Twitter account. You need to be prepared, you need to listen and you need to have a plan for dealing with negative comments or a campaign backlash.

When running social media training courses with Michelle Carvill, we work with a simple but powerful framework – PLAN, LISTEN, ANALYSE, ENGAGE – which is effectively good practice across a number of activities.

In the case of social media relations and online brand protection, this framework still very much applies. So here are my top tips to ensure that your brand is protected:

Plan

Before you set up your accounts on social media, prepare for the very worst case scenarios and work with your team to figure out how you would deal with them.

For example, if you are a restaurant and one of your diners posts on your Page that you gave them violent food poisoning, what would be your response and what would be your service recovery strategy? Speed of response is also key – as brand reputation can be attacked in minutes these days.

Similarly, how would you react to negative comments on your blog or if someone hounds you on Twitter? (Both of which happen on an ever-increasing basis these days).

It’s key to be thinking about the ‘what if’ scenarios to ensure that you are prepared for anything on the social media platforms.

Listen

It is imperative that you listen to the conversations taking place online about your brand. Do you have any idea about what people may be saying about you? Frequently check your blog for comments and have push notifications to ensure you get messaged once someone posts on your wall or mentions you on Twitter. In an age of mobile communications, this means that you may have to be listening 24/7.

At the same time, set up simple Google Alerts (www.google.com/alerts) to see what’s being said on the web or via Social Mention (www.socialmention.com) – similar to Google Alerts but for social media activity.

It is also a good idea to set up a stream within Twitter or on a social media dashboard such as, Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, where you can set your brand name as a keyword and track all activity against it.

On a trip to the States last year, I had a bad experience with the airline Delta. After complaining about them on Twitter via their @delta handle, a few minutes later their customer service channel @deltassist responded to me. In other words, they were doing the listening part well, even if they couldn’t transport me properly by air to my destination!

Analyse

With all these real time feedback mechanisms, you will be able to see what your customers/fans are saying about your brand.

If it is positive, use this to grow customer loyalty or for testimonials. If it is negative, just as with traditional media relations, you need to think about what your response will be. This could include:

• preparing lines to take,
• setting up inter-departmental meetings to discuss where things are going wrong in your organisation
• and deciding on whether you are going to come out in a bullish or defensive way.

A great example of this is the recent decision by Instagram to start selling people’s photos. After an enormous backlash on social media, they decided to change their terms and conditions and made a robust public apology – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9760151/Instagram-retreats-over-privacy-outcry.html

Engage

With the planning and researching phases in place, you will now be in a position to engage. Your response may have to be extremely swift, hence why the preparation stage is so important.

Unlike traditional media relations, the conversations on social media channels are all on the record and can be seen by many people. So, depending on the circumstances, you may need to move the complainant to a more private channel – (Direct Messaging on Twitter, directing them to a ‘Chat’ facility on your website, private messages on Facebook, email or even a phone call).

The majority of the time, you must been seen to react. Saying nothing or even worse, blocking the complainant, or deleting their comments will only inflame the situation.

Following the Townsend Toreson ferry disaster of 1987 when 49 people died, the parent company P&O’s managing director was criticised for not facing the cameras. Politicians are also very adept on not facing the press, until too late.

Contrast this with the swift response by the emergency services and politicians following the 7/7 bombings in London.

There will even be times when a swift and a carefully thought-out response can turn a negative into a positive. For example, using the Delta airlines case study again, I was impressed that they were listening to my complaints. Following this, a direct message conversation took place in which they went a long way to restoring my faith in their brand. At the very least, people like to think they are being listened to!

David Taylor is the managing director of 2010media. He has trained over 1,200 businesses in social media and online marketing alongside Founder and Director of Carvill Creative, Michelle Carvill. He is also co-author with Michelle of the soon-to-be-published book ‘The Business of Being Social – A Practical Guide to Harnessing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube for Business’.

 

There’s no doubt about it – the channels now available online to target audiences have broadened significantly.

You can target audiences via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ (and others)- and savvy marketing teams are increasingly including these channels as a regular route to market.
Being ‘active’ on social networks has many facets – it’s not just about direct lead generation – however, as with all campaigns and activities, they ideally should focus on some specific measurable outcomes. One of the most asked questions I hear is – ‘For all this social media activity, how will we measure tangible return on investment’?

It’s a fair question – after all, social media is ‘always on’ and therefore, providing ‘continuous conversations’ is a resource hungry venture – people, time, training and content creation.
My ethos and the culture at Carvill Creative is always to ensure that before any activity is undertaken, the questions of ‘Why are we doing this and what are we looking to achieve’ (kind of the same thing) – are well and truly answered, so that all involved have a very clear rationale, direction and purpose.

Social Media isn’t about doing social media activity for the sake of it – just keeping you on the radar (although if that’s your objective, it could be) – as ideally, it should be working to meet your specific objectives.

This clarity in thinking why you’re doing something – then leads to clarity in the processes required to ensure you are able to measure outcomes.

“If we want to achieve X – then what processes do we need to put in place to deliver on X?”

Focus on tangible metrics and create a marketing campaign that delivers

Let’s say you are targeting a specific audience with a Facebook Ad campaign. Getting creative with the campaign / ad is one thing – but the critical element, which surprisingly is often overlooked, is the focus of where you are going to send people to and what you are going to measure.

Many Facebook Ads simply drive people back to the Facebook Timeline rather than to a specific ‘landing page’. If you send people to a place where there are not any clear signposts of what you exactly want them to do – then guess what…(it’s not rocket science)… they’re unlikely to do what you want them to do.

Whereas, if you send them to a clear and perfectly signposted landing page whereby they can clearly view the proposition and are clear on what they need to do to participate, for example, provide you with their name and email address (data capture) – in order to download an ebook, guide, join the competition, prize draw (you get the drift) – then you have created a ‘lead capture’ process which provides you not only with metrics for traffic hitting that specific landing page, but also who then converted and did what you wanted them to do – and of course, provides you with tangible data to use in follow ups or other marketing activity. A ‘joined up’ approach is far more effective and delivers you with tangible outcomes.

This same focus and approach is relevant for any activity you do.  As the briliant Stephen Covey outlines in his still relevant ‘7 Habits of Highly Successful People’ – habit number 2 is, “start with the end in mind”.   I couldn’t agree more – it’s fundamental to have absolute clarity on what you are looking to achieve – and this will help you design a joined up campaign that delivers.

Start with the end in mind basic planning framework:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This framework doesn’t go into the campaign delivery detail – but it does get you thinking about top line activity – and fundamentally, what the activity needs to deliver on.

I’ll finish where I started with the wise words … ‘Start with the end in mind’.

Happy socialising…
Michelle

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog