Values is a term that we are seeing really moving in conversation at the moment. Not just with movements and governments, but in friends circles and family conversation. But how do brands add value to their customers, and why do we care?
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We are being asked a lot how Covid-19 is affecting our business. What all of this means for our little Company of One, what we are doing with all our “extra time” and are we worried about what the future holds?
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Over the past few months in Australia we have had a huge change in the way that social media operates, particularly for brands and influencers. The removing of likes by both Instagram and now Facebook has caused outrage in some corners of the social media world and rejoicing in others. The question now is what this means for business, and I am the first person to say who the heck cares if they’ve hidden the likes – that’s not the point. Outrageous, I know.
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As part of an ongoing conversation into how we should all be using social media in 2019 is the conversation about sales. Social media managers are increasingly being asked about the dollar value amount they bring into a business, what’s their ROI. And we have no issues about being asked about our ROI – what we do want to look at is what we mean when we talk about the “return”.
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We spoke recently about why email marketing is important and why it should be a key part of your amplification strategy. But there’s no sense in sending out a carefully crafted message that doesn’t add value to the people you are trying to target – but who are they anyway? Who are you designing your EDMs for and what are you trying to get them to do?
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I spoke last week about how important it is to be blogging for your brand, but it’s important to note that no one wants to be putting in all the effort of blogging without sharing it with the intended audience. While content being live on your website is a good thing for increasing your search results or giving you kudos in the eyes of Google, ultimately what we should be trying to do with any blog post is to deliver value for your customers – so we have to get the content to the people! What are you doing to amplify your blog posts? Firstly, you need to consider the lifecycle of your blog post when writing it. Is it a piece of evergreen or cornerstone content – a blog post on a topic that will continue to be relevant for an extended period of time? Or is it really topical and will only be relevant for a little while? If your content is evergreen, share it a little bit now, but anticipate that you will be able to share and promote that content for as much as years afterwards. If your content is only going to be relevant for a short period, share and amplify it quickly and regularly over a shorter space of time to get maximum mileage out of your posts. Then consider your amplification platforms. Where does your blog go once it’s live on your website? Pick and mix from the list, depending on what your marketing strategy looks like right now: Email newsletter | Affiliate or partner websites | Social media | As an article on LinkedIn | as part of a campaign promoting another piece of content | via direct email to customers (usually in an email signature) | As a printed fact sheet | Now consider the piece of content itself – what are the ways that we can get maximum mileage out of this one idea? Some of these I touched on earlier in the article. You can share a blog post with your suppliers or partners in the hope that they will share it with their audience. You can turn a brief (350 words or so for best results) blog post into a longer report or fact sheet. Turn quotes from the blog post into images to go onto your social media. Create an explainer video that…
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Whether you call it copy, content, news, updates, articles or blogs, writing words that you share regularly with your customers is becoming more and more important for businesses. Blogs generally fall into one of the below topics: Product information | Service information | News | Corporate messaging | Industry education | Work reviews | Industry updates | Blogging was once considered the domain of young people who wanted to share their every thought, sort of like a diary online. Now, bloggers are major influencers online and writing a corporate blog has a host of benefits for your brand. Here’s why you should be putting pen to paper (or keys to screen) for your business. Become an expert voice in your industry or space Blogs provide an excellent avenue for brands to share insights on your product, service or corporate mission and culture – heck, it can provide you with an opportunity to criticise your competitors or call for greater legislation. A blog provides you with an opportunity to share your knowledge with your customer base and allows you to position yourself as an expert within your field. But with great power comes great responsibility – make sure that you have a clear, strong, correct message and take time to really consider what it is you want to say, who you’re targeting and what you want them to get out of it. Contributions to SEO – particularly with googles new changes Blogging contributes in a number of different ways to your search engine optimisation – it provides more keywords for Google to index from your site and updating content attracts users to your website in the first place. The Google algorithms are constantly changing, and in the latest update in June of 2018, Google announced that they will be giving greater search results to those brands who create engaging, regularly updated content that people want to read. So whether you’re publishing blogs on topics that people regularly search relative to your business, or whether you’re explaining concepts, strategies and processes, what you write will contribute more than ever to the discoverability of your brand. Forced consideration Sometimes, particularly with new products or services, brands just create these things out of a perceived customer need. The marketing strategy, the communication strategy, where precisely the product or service fits in the market – that can be a bit…
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Value is a term that is often tossed around, mostly from people trying to sell you things. For me, value is about what I learn, grow or get enjoyment from – and that is a pretty broad set of standards. In the fast-paced, often vapid-seeming world of social media though, the question we should ALL be asking is “What VALUE does my social media bring to my customers lives?”
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A blog post is not like a firework, one spark and it’s done. Blog posts can (and should!) attract customers for months after you write them. All it takes is a little planning and motivation to keep them working for you all year round. 1. Comments. You can and should be commenting on other people’s posts all over the Internet. On Facebook, Instagram, other blogs, LinkedIn, whatever platforms your brand operates on, create the conversation that social is supposed to be about. Be more subtle than “hey read my post”, but use it as an opportunity to contribute your own story, your own learnings or perspective. 2. Backlinks within your own posts This is one of my most effective tools as a social media manager. They say it costs 10x as much to attract a new customer as it takes to retain one – so why doesn’t the same rule apply for your blog? If you have an interested reader there, bounce them between posts and keep them on your site. This can be done in a few ways, including widgets that preview content you might be interested based on the tags attached to the post you are currently reading; or literal links in your post when that topic is mentioned. Both work well. 3. Emailing them out to clients when the question arises This is a great one for more corporate companies. How often us your customer service writing the same stupid response to a common question? Write a blog post, and cut your work in half and ensure that consistent quality information is given every time. 4. Flashback Friday, Throwback Thursday etc. This is a very visible Internet trend but is also just good advice. No-one else is going to talk about your older content if you don’t – and you didn’t write it for it to be a one and done deal did you? The idea of social media is also that your follower base is continually growing – so an older post will always have a new audience, and that might be the perfect piece of advice for that audience, who in turn will share and move the content, encouraging new followers who haven’t seen your content… See the cycle yet? So establish a flashback system – whether it’s #flashbackfriday #throwbackthursday or posting content that is exactly one year old; remember to push and hustle your…
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