Successful Blog

Are Complaints the Biggest Social Media Traffic Drivers?

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Have you ever had the opportunity to moan about something via social media? Did you do it? Put your hand up if the answer is yes…

Was it the stale bread in your lunchtime snack, a broken product, or something that you purchased but it didn’t work or was it something bigger? 

Did you complain about bad service?

So let’s talk about the dark side of social media traffic

I work with brands as well as small businesses to help them create and implement the right social media strategy for their business. If a company does its due diligence, it’ll find the Virgin Media post. They will see me bashing a brand to good effect – it got a resolution to a problem. But does that mean they will want to work with me? Am I biting the hand that feeds me?

When starting a business and considering various domain name ideas, keep branding in mind: How will it be perceived on social media?

Let’s look at it from their perspective. A company starts to follow me on Twitter. We interact a few times, start chatting and then they click on a link and find my site. They’re intrigued. Like all good social media marketers, I provide lots of valuable content for free and they can read through and see that I really know my stuff. 

They will also see that one of my busiest posts is one that shows how fed up I am with the responses from another company. They may feel empathy, they may feel annoyance or they may just lose a little respect for me.

Not all social media complaints get an easy resolution, just because you can blog and kick up a fuss doesn’t mean you’ll get the outcome you desire.

If you are looking for traffic and love to complain, be careful because it can quickly spiral out of control. It’s not just bloggers that complain, it’s irate customers.

If you are in business, great service is the way that you avoid bad social media traffic and the cost of a reputation management expert. If you experience bad service and are tempted to air it via social media, remember it can get out of hand, and not all social traffic is great traffic.

Have you or your company experienced the dark side of social media traffic?

Image by Azmi Talib from Pixabay

Your Company Blog – Why It’s Still Your Online Marketing Hub

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With all of the excitement about Facebook, Twitter and now, Linkedin, you might get so distracted that you forget about your blog.

Big mistake!

Your company blog is the best asset that your company has and should be the hub of all of your online marketing activities.

Here’s why your Company Blog is your online marketing hub:

1) You Own It!

Your accounts on the social media platforms are not yours. They can be turned off at any moment if it’s considered that you’ve violated their terms of service.

It is a little bit of an investment but you can get your domain names cheap and hosting can also be very affordable.

2) It’s Tuesday, Facebook must have changed again

The social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are constantly changing the rules. They change how you post content, how to connect with people, the rules around privacy, how you can communicate with your connections, the look and feel of the site and what third party applications you can use (or not use) with your page on their system. Your blog serves as a point of stability online.

3) Your Blog is the fuel for your social media Eengagement!

What happens if you participate in social media and have nothing to share? Well, if you don’t produce any content of your own, you’re basically passing around other people’s content and not driving anyone back to your own site. Produce great content, share via social media, and get qualified traffic back to your site!

4) You Control the Design

Your presence on social media platforms is very constrained. You can only design your page based on the constraints of the social media platform. Your blog and website allow you much greater design flexibility where you can really express your unique branding.

5) You’re Free To Sell On Your Blog

There are policies and technical limitations to marketing or processing transactions on social media sites. In some cases marketing is limited and you can rarely (or never) actually process a transaction on a social media site. Bring them back to your blog and website as a key part of your marketing and to finalize any transactions.

6) Search Traffic to can be a free, ongoing Lead Generation Source

The narrower you target your efforts, the easier it is to rank in the search engines. For example, rather than targeting “home architect” (and competing with ALL home architects), why don’t you focus on “Palo Alto Home Architect”? Getting your blog to rank for your key terms can lead to qualified and ongoing traffic to your site.

Image by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay

5 Reasons Your Company Should Not Use Online Videos

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There are a lot of very good reasons to use online videos for your company, and it has been effective for both B2B and b2c companies.  

However, the internet is littered with videos that should have never been made, and here are some obstacles that may keep you from creating a lesser video for your brand.

1. Your Boss Doesn’t Think It Is Necessary

Even if you are confident that your company can use video effectively, at the end of the day, if the decision-makers aren’t convinced, it’s not going to happen. 

You can try to explain to your boss why it may be beneficial to the company, but the reality is that videos cost money and not everyone’s going to want to spend the amount necessary to make a good video.

2. You Don’t Have a Budget

The worst thing you can do for your company is risk your brand’s reputation by being attached to poorly made content of any kind. If you don’t have the budget, don’t try to go the “cheap” route. It is much better to not have  video at all than to have a bad one. 

Video production costs money: the equipment, time and experience are all important pieces to producing a good video. If you don’t have the budget now, it’s probably best to wait until you do.

3. You Have Unrealistic Expectations

You need to be aware of how much a video can really help your business and what your expectations are for it. It is good to have clear and focused expectations. Does this video heighten brand awareness? Is it supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be informative? How do you want people to respond when they see it? Who is going to see it? 

These are all important questions to ask to help clarify exactly what your expectations are for your video. A video you use internally can’t be judged by the same criteria that a YouTube video is. This is why it is important to know your target audience.  If you have unrealistic expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

4. Your Goal Is Viral Online Videos

One way your goal can be unrealistic is if you hoping for your video to go viral. If a video goes viral, that generally means that it is being shared and re-shared by a large number of blogs, Facebook pages, and other social media outlets. 

The problem with expecting this is that it is incredibly uncommon and unlikely for it to happen to your video. While it’s true that the most popular viral video may have over 100 million views, the reality is that you only have a 0.3% chance of even reaching 10,000 views. It would be better to focus on creating a video that is sharable rather than viral.

A better goal is to make your site engaging. There are so many plugins and CMS solutions that integrate videos easily and make pages more attractive and useful. Shopify allows to add product videos which make product pages so much more effective. Here is a Shopify discount code for you to try this feature!

5. You Don’t Have a Goal For the Online Videos

Even worse than unrealistic expectations is to not have any goals at all. How are you supposed to evaluate the success or failure of your video if you don’t know how to measure it?

 It also makes it difficult to brainstorm on the creative end without having clear goals in mind. The possibilities of video are endless so having an end in mind helps narrow down what kind of video you need. You shouldn’t make a video just to make a video, so it’s crucial to be able to articulate your goals clearly.

There are plenty of good reasons to use video for your company.  However, if your  company is facing any of these roadblocks, you need to sit down and think through solutions to them before hiring a video production company.  

It’s always better to wait until you are ready to move forward and create a video than it is to rush into production and come away with a video that isn’t right for you.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

How to Choose (and Use) the Best Tools for Your Business

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Tools have the power to either make your life simpler, or more complicated, depending on what you choose.

That is why making the right choice is important.

Here are my top tips on finding what tools are right for your blog or business.

Start by defining your needs.

Most people look at price or features, and just assume if the price is low and the features are numerous, they will be set. But that’s not always the case. A tool could have 1,000+ features, which is pretty awesome. But if you are only going to need three of those features, then there’s no sense in

  • A) paying for things you don’t need or
  • B) not choosing a tool that is awesome at the three features you need and instead choosing one that is so-so at a 1,000+ features.

Let’s say that you’re evaluating email marketing software. Your requirements are that it integrates well with other tools that you use, it offers a wide variety of templates that are mobile friendly, it allows you to preview emails before you send them, and it helps you create great forms and squeeze pages.

While there are tons of platforms to choose from, you’ll likely go with GetResponse because of their 100+ integrations, responsive email design, inbox preview tool, web form builder, and squeeze page generator.

Once you have defined your requirements, making a choice about what tool to go with will be much simpler.

Compare your top choice with some alternatives.

Just because you only found one tool that fits your needs, doesn’t mean it’s the only tool out there. There are great sites like TopAlternatives.com that can help you find the top tools for specific needs. For example, in their SEO category, they break down tools with specific functions.

This can help you discover a few great alternatives so that you can jump into the next step. They offer alternative tools for building a website, customer satisfaction, design, ecommerce, email marketing, mobile, optimization, SEO, social media, time management, usability, visual  marketing, and business communication.

Try before you buy.

Whether you end up trying to decide between multiple tools with the features you want, or just one that seems to be perfect, be sure to try it before you buy it. Most tools will offer some form of free trial, usually ranging from seven to thirty days. Here are my recommended free trial tips.

  • Don’t sign up for a free trial until you are ready to actually use it.
  • Set a reminder in your calendar to visit the tool each day until the trial ends.
  • Take into consideration the ease of use of the tool you are trying. If it’s difficult, you won’t want to use it on a regular basis, which will lower its value for your business.
  • Know how long you have and when/where to cancel if you decide against a particular tool (include a reminder in your calendar for the last day to cancel).
  • Plan to evaluate the results of using a particular tool the day before you need to decide to commit to it.
  • Look for deals before buying any tool you liked. For example, searching for “Wix promo code” may help you discover great budgeting options.

Remind yourself to regularly use your tools.

Once you have made the commitment to the right tools for your blog or business, don’t let them sit stagnant while they auto-debit your credit card. Set them up so you can easily remember to use them on a daily basis. If they are web applications, for example, create a folder on your bookmarks bar for your tools and put your username next to each so you can easily get to the login pages and remember how to login. Below is my list of top tools…

If there’s certain times you want to check a particular tool, such as taking a daily look at all of your dashboards in Cyfe to review your analytics, then you’ll want to set a calendar reminder to do so. What I like to do is grab a link to the first dashboard I want to view (like my ultimate social media dashboard)…

You don’t have to do these specific things, but you should make it a point to regularly use your tools.

Review, and review often.

If you find you’re not regularly using a particular tool based on difficulty or lack of usefulness, then it might be a sign you need to choose something new. Or, at the very least, time to cancel your account and save some money until you find something new.

Finding the right tool is key to business productivity.

For this, you might want to set a monthly or quarterly reminder to review all of the tools in your toolbox to see if you are still using them and still getting what you need out of them. If not, go back to the beginning of this post and start the selection process over again. This will ensure that you are always getting value from the tools you choose for your business.

How do you find great tools for your blog or business and then ensure you are always using them?

Image by free stock photos from www.picjumbo.com from Pixabay

Watch Your Tone! Finding Your Brand Voice

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Whether you realize it or not, your brand has a tone of voice. You may have a hard time identifying it, but you can bet your customers are aware of it. 

The good news is that you can control and shape this tone – but you better act sooner rather than later.

The Value of Your Voice

The term “tone of voice” typically conjures up thoughts about spoken words and how we speak in certain situations. However, in the case of marketing and branding, it refers to written words – or the words a brand uses on websites, emails, advertisements, social media, and packaging.

“A tone of voice both embodies and expresses the brand’s personality and set of values,” writes Harriet Cummings, freelance writer and content marketer. “It’s about the people that make up the brand – the things that drive them, their loves and hates, and what they want to share with the world.”

Your brand’s tone of voice doesn’t just refer to the words you select, though. It’s also defined by the order, pace, and rhythm of the words. All of these factors come together to create something that’s bigger than the words themselves.

Three Tips for Shaping Your Voice

As a brand, how often do you consider your tone of voice? Don’t be ashamed if the answer is “never.” 

Many marketers and modern business professionals have been taught to focus too much on the mode of communication and not enough on the words used. If this is true in your situation, it’s time to reevaluate. Here are a few things you need to know about shaping your brand’s tone of voice:

1. Understand Your Audience

“It may seem simple, but it is more important than ever to understand who your audience is and what they expect,” says Lisa Giosi, social media manager for Active Web Group. “Gone are the days when one message fit all consumers. Today’s sophisticated audiences expect there to be a conversation, as opposed to just one-way communication.”

Do you know who your audience is? Your audience will shape your voice to a large degree. The good news is that you can learn a lot about how your customers speak and interact by studying what they do and like on social media.

Set up a customer appreciation week to get to know your customers better, or organize a local meetup. Implement email marketing to collect customers’ feedback, use surveys and feedback forms, etc.

2. Hone in on Your Values

Your audience plays a large role in shaping your voice, but there are also plenty of internal factors that determine the tone you select. Think about your brand’s core values, goals, inspirations, and other important factors. 

How do you want them to come across in your messaging? In most cases, these elements will coincide with your audience’s preferences, but there can be subtle differences.

3. Study Relevant Examples

One of the best things you can do is study other successful brands and evaluate their tones. You don’t want to mimic what they’re doing, but it can be incredibly helpful to see what they’re doing and watch the consistency they achieve across the board.

This resource over at Marketing Land has 20 different examples of effective social media voices. Check out a few of them and see if there are some lessons you can apply to your own brand’s tone of voice.

Do Your Brand Justice

Your brand’s voice says a lot about the values your company stands for and believes in. In order to connect with customers and create meaningful online experiences, you must master the art of crafting and using a compelling voice that does your brand justice. 

Make sure to maintain your brand consistency and use your brand’s visual identity across all your channels, from social media to print. There’s Vista print promo code for you to do this on a budget.

Using the tips in this article, and your own intuition about your brand and its target audience, begin shaping your voice for the future. Your ability to create effective content depends on it.

10 Social Media Reporting Apps You Can’t Live Another Day Without

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Do you have a dedicated social media reporting app? If the answer is no, I have only one question for you: how are you getting through the day?!

Social media campaigns are no longer just a matter of posting links and offering news of specials. You need to really stand out, and that takes time, energy, and a ton of data. Not only for businesses, but just for blogs and personal brands as well. Without the proper information at your disposal, you don’t have a chance.

Social media platforms offer native analytics, which can be consolidated if you have a good link in bio tool but if you need to go deeper, these are the ten social media tracking and reporting apps you can’t afford to go another day without using.

SumAll

This isn’t just a social media dashboard, it is also an ecommerce monitoring tool. So if you want something more well rounded than analytics, it can be a great option for your business. it is all based around leads and conversions, unlike many other platforms that are purely about social growth.

The two pronged approach makes it an effective tool for using social media in the way it is best utilized: as a way to build a customer base, not just your clout online.

Agorapulse

Just need a simple (but good) social media manager? Agorapulse is compatible with three platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Which are going to be the three primary social networks for most businesses anyway, given their ever growing list of features aimed at companies.

You can get detailed reports, manage all messages from a single dashboard, and launch both contests and promotions customized to fit your needs. After the free trial pricing starts at $24 a month, with plans up to $199. But they also have three free tools: Facebook barometer, contest manager, and a Facebook Marketing University course.

Sprout Social

One of the bigger names in social media analytics, Sprout Social is a complete management software that can be compared to other giants like Hootsuite. Used by many major brands, such as Dove and UPS, it covers all your social bases from planning, to scheduling, to posting, to analyzing.

They have a smart inbox, live monitoring, tracking,  social CRM, analytics, team collaboration, and other features you would expect from such a large scale dashboard. Pricing can be a bit steep, starting at $59 a month. But if you are running a branding campaign, it is worth it.

Cyfe

This is probably the most impressive tool to come out in a long time. Cyfe is a full business monitoring platform that aims to handle literally every possible avenue of your online engagement and tasks from a single service.

Cyfe can help you with social media, analytics, email marketing, sales, customer support, and infrastructure.

But what is more incredible is the price. The basic features are free, but you will want Premium. For $19 per month (or $14 if you pay annually), you get unlimited everything, and access to all of the monitoring software for what was listed above.

Social Report

Just want social tracking? Social Report is a great metrics tool that shows all of your social accounts in cross-platform reports that show you progress on all of your projects.

They also have team collaboration and backup tools, so you and your social team can track progress over time and make decisions accordingly. All of their plans also have wider web analytics, which can be helpful in giving you a fuller picture.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a mixed bag. On one hand, there is no denying it has become a powerhouse in analytics and social management. But it is also one of the more expensive, and the credit system it uses is annoying.

For example, you get some very basic reports as part of Pro, but others have to be purchased with credits that can only be bought in bulk, and so cost hundreds to replenish. Not really an option for small operations. The good thing about it is the many features it provides. Their tools are very in depth, so much so that they have dozens of webinars exploring what can be done on their platform.

Simply Measured

Simply Measured is usually mentioned on lists less for their premium features, and more for their free tools. They have a long list of them, and are also one of the few platforms that offers monitoring capabilities for Google Plus and Vine.

In fact, you can incorporate quite a lot of services in with their free tools, and end up with a great system without spending a penny. Which is good, because their premium tools start at $500 per month. They are a full social analytics and solutions company and tend to work with larger businesses as a result. If you can afford them, they are worth it. If not, their free tools are excellent.

Raven

Raven is the marketer’s ultimate tool. While it has plenty of analytics features, scheduling and more, it is much more focused on creating extensive and beautiful reports that show clients and bosses how things are progressing.

It is a social analytics tool made to make you, the marketer, look good. So while it is practice, it is also a bit of a job-justifier.

Tailwind

Pinterest has been pretty stingy on sharing their API. They don’t want a lot of competition for their analytics and marketing tools, which are frankly not good enough to stand on their own, yet.

Tailwind is the last standing Pinterest monitoring and marketing tool, and luckily it is a good one. It can also be integrated with Hootsuite using the third party app selection, so you can monitor it from there.

Keyhole

Most people who use Keyhole know it for its real time hashtag tracking. But it also has historical data, influencer identification, and a few other features that make it a great platform for Twitter campaigns.

They have short term campaigns available, which make it a unique monitoring tool, and attractive for special events like conventions that don’t need year round campaign management.

Have a tool that belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments!

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