©2018, Colleen Eakins Design

Have Fun with this Social Media Marketing Challenge

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So, you are excited about the benefits that social media marketing offers your business. Now you’re looking to launch a winning campaign that will help people find your brand. Great. The only thing left to do is to create compelling content that will attract shares and likes. Luckily for you, fantastic content doesn’t take long to construct.

Let’s take a look at a stress-free plan to create two weeks’ worth of lovable sharing ideas to help attract your ideal clientele. This strategy combines using common sense and a small bit of digital effort to help convey your brand message to an online audience.

#1 | Show People Who You Are and How You Work

People love images, especially ones that show people engaged in work that stokes their passions. That means coming up with the perfect share could be as simple as snapping a pic at work. Plainly you see pictures like this all the time, and there’s a logical explanation for that. Consumers need to trust your organization, and one way to help them do that is by showing them who you are and what you do on a daily basis.

#2 | Put a Customer or Vendor in the Spotlight

Interview a vendor or one of your customers to gain their insight and to share online. Adding a fresh, secondary perspective makes your content even more accessible. Communication with key personalities in your brand’s value chain will open doors. A loyal customer will probably love appearing on your profiles and will know that you value their opinion. Vendors bring industry-specific expertise to bear that enhance your corporate image.

#3 | Answer a Pressing Question

Fielding questions and relating comprehensive answers is another beneficial way to spread the word about your business. Potential clients want to know they’re dealing with an expert or experienced professional. Rather than tell them how amazing you are, why not show them instead? You can write a blog post or make a video on Facebook or Instagram that covers a common question for your industry. People who are searching for new vendors will often have these sorts of queries in mind, so you get a chance to introduce yourself to them quickly.

#4 | Introduce New Workers

Do you have any new employees? If so, now would be an ideal time to share the news. A smiling face could help start a conversation on the social networks that assist you in beginning a business relationship. Never forget that it’s always about people, so projecting a warm, friendly persona goes a long way towards brand acceptance.

#5 | Add Your Take to a Trending Topic

Now and then a trending, non-controversial topic will closely relate to your industry or you personally. When it does, share the issue with your audience and add relevant commentary.  Since the subject is fresh in people’s minds, your post will get more attention, which also draws eyes towards your brand.

#6 | Tickle Their Funny Bones

Believe it or not, funny cat images are still incredibly powerful! Occasionally sharing pictures or videos that you find amusing is a quick way to gain popularity.

#7 | Fill-In-The-Blanks Are Fun and Engaging

Making a Fill-In-The-Blank is a fun way to engage your digital audience. Any topic can work, but you may as well relate it to your industry and organization for maximum impact.

#8 | Tell the World Your Story

Tell your brand’s story whenever possible, in the most natural way possible. Explain how your company operates and detail your mission. Help others to become passionate about dealing with your company because they share your values.

#9 | Inspire Your Audience

Who doesn’t benefit from reading or hearing something inspirational? Depending on the nature of your business or organization, this could include progress reports on current projects, charitable work you’re involved in, or looking back on how far you’ve come.

#10 | Broadcast Live Video

Are you hosting an event or just having an awesome day at work? Consider doing a Live Video broadcast on Facebook or other Platforms to connect with your audience with the power of video. Ideas could include product demonstrations, client interviews, or broadcasting your event.

#11 | Recognize Another Business

As they say, ‘sharing is caring!’ If you stop by a local company or business, consider sharing a picture is a great way to recognize other companies and share the love!

#12 | Share an Interesting Fact

Almost everyone will agree that it’s refreshing to learn little-known facts. Infographics are particularly compelling for sharing statistics and other structured data.

#13 | Repurpose Like A Boss

Don’t overlook the body of work you already have at your fingertips. Instead of creating something entirely new from scratch, use a photo or other digital asset differently. (Think image filters, text, etc.)

#14 | Celebrate The Season

Join the crowd and help your followers celebrate the season – whatever the season may be! Commonly celebrated Spring holidays include Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. Summer holidays include Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. Autumn holidays include Halloween and Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas when winter arrives.

#15 | Share Your Newsletter Content in Your Social Circles

The chances are good that not everyone you interact with online gets your email newsletter. These days, most commercial email providers make it easy for you to share your email newsletter to your social media platforms. This feature empowers you to offer your friends and fans access to your newsletters from their favorite platform.

#16 | Do a Poll to Increase Engagement

One of the most fun ways to engage with your fans, and followers is by making a poll. People love to give their opinions and feedback, so this is an ideal way to energize and promote interactions with your audience.

#17 | Join New Platforms and Establish Your Online Presence

These days, there is always a new online platform to explore and establish your online presence. Embrace the opportunity to join and use these platforms to connect with people you may not know!

We hope that you find this post helpful for spicing things up on your social media marketing channels for the next two weeks!

Grow Your Business With The Right Marketing Strategy [infographic]

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Denese EakinsDenese is a lover of knowledge and puts her research skills and creative eye to good use with her infographics. When she’s not researching and designing visuals to present data, she spends time volunteering in her other passion–health education.

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Messing up Your Content Marketing Could Destroy Your Brand Forever

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There’s little doubt that many people who want to market products or services online are not careful with their content. Perhaps they have others to do the work for them, or they are in a hurry to push out more ideas fast. Either way, careless mistakes are common across the web.

Massive enterprises may be able to get away with a few ‘typos’ or grammatical troubles here and there. Smaller brands, though, cannot afford this same luxury. When they err, people don’t trust them anymore. It makes sense. When a consumer searches for a new provider of a service or product, they tend to be critical. Any issues of poor design, structure, or writing could turn them off to your company’s message forever.

Your Content Offerings Should Be In Line With Your Overall Branding

If your organization produces shoddy content, you’re telling the world that your brand just doesn’t care about quality. Why would people part with their hard-earned dollars to take the risk of dealing with your firm, then?

Even worse is if your company screws up and publishes something defamatory, insulting to a broad group of people, or that lacks context and causes misunderstandings. In that case, your entire brand may face a crisis. People can switch tastes overnight and might do so due to an errant post or miscommunication. One significant mistake is all it takes to wipe out years of goodwill.

By now you know the takeaway is: content errors make your organization look like amateurs. The problem here is that people don’t want to PAY amateurs. The fact you take payments makes you a professional by default, so show the world you have a commitment to professionalism by producing flawless content that drives impressive business results.

How Can I Solve This Potential Branding Problem?

By now you’re probably throwing your hands up in the air and exclaiming, “I can’t take any content errors! What do I do?”

Well, the good news is professional content marketers take pride in their craft and can perform perfect work for your brand, regardless of the scope of the project.

The advantage of using professional content marketers is that they understand how crucial it is to get things right on the first try with no warm up. Time is money so they cannot afford to go back and fix errors or to clean up an ugly mess from a social media faux pas.

Accuracy and Authenticity Always Sell

Brands need to convey authority and authenticity with every move they make. The best way to accomplish this goal is to push out stellar content that gets shares and engagement. People only engage with content they truly admire and enjoy, so the barrier to accomplishing this requirement is high. With so many competitors doing the same thing you can see why content consumers are so finicky. They don’t have to deal with weak companies or brands that don’t seem to care a bit about accuracy or doing the job right!

Make Content Errors a Thing of the Past

Once you decide to eliminate content errors from your life, you’ll need to make a plan. Whether you choose to keep the work in-house or hire freelancers or agencies doesn’t matter. What’s crucial is that you develop a thorough process of error checking before distribution. That way you’ll be able to discover errors early in the content product pipeline, instead of when an angry prospect notifies you!

Errors in content happen during the project management stage. Savvy administrators have systems in place to safeguard against mistakes making it in front of end users. Instead, perfect documents go into distribution. In the case of high volume content production, systems matter even more. If your organization is making mistakes, those problems will scale rapidly!

Delegate Tasks and Get Things Done!

Delegating content production to others makes sense if you don’t have the time or inclination to do it right. Whether you have an English-savvy person on your staff or you have to outsource doesn’t make a difference. All that matters is that your end product is professional and error free. That’s all your prospects have to judge your brand by, so give them what they expect regarding quality.

The Internet has grown so much that amateurish efforts rarely pay off these days. There’s a lot of competition out there so keep that in mind when you want to launch a new content distribution plan. You need to have the best possible unique content and a plan to get it in front of the right people.

Follow the Content Schedule

A primary reason mistakes happen with content is because of a rush mentality. A content schedule is the fastest way to mitigate this issue. Instead of rushing around past your deadline you can calmly create topics and web content way ahead of the publication date. Slowing down the process allows for more planning and better execution. Your team will not turn in material that’s mistake laden if they have enough time and resources to proofread and do final quality checks.

Make a Commitment to Quality

A commitment to quality is necessary for any organization that hopes to receive search engine and social media visitors. Without a professional presentation, you may find yourself facing an uphill battle to gain traction and credibility. Look around at the main players in your industry online. The ones that get the most traffic tend to have deep content that wins likes and shares.

There’s no time like the present to take your content to the next level and you can start by reviewing your existing content. Start with your most popular, visited, and clicked content. Review for errors and mistakes and if necessary, update to make sure the content is still relevant. If you need to delegate this task to someone on your team, do so! Moving forward, create and plan your content. Build a workflow and put a system in place to keep the content you push out, error free. Online businesses are only going to continue growing. If you want your piece of the pie, there’s no reason to settle for less.

Let’s Get Personal–How Emotions and Empathy Play Into Branding and Marketing Campaigns

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As an entrepreneur or startup business, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself wearing many hats during your day to day business operations. Of all the hats you’re likely to wear, probably the most challenging one to slip on is your marketing and advertising hat.

In today’s modern world, that means completing hundreds of technical steps in just the right way. You have to be sure that your business website is user-friendly, that you have a matching mobile app, keeping your social media profiles updated, as well as everything else you have to do to keep your company running smoothly.

You might be thinking, “How in the world can I do all the things I need to do, plus run a successful marketing plan to attract new business?”

Many small business owners, freelancers, mompreneurs, etc. that handle their marketing and advertising campaigns on their own are forced to “think outside of the box” to promote their business without breaking their advertising budget. While this may seem like an overwhelming task, this is actually an excellent opportunity to get your creative juices flowing and create a strong bond with your audience and customers.

Here are a few ideas to help inspire you.

Tell Your Story – One of the best things about running your own business is getting the chance to share the story behind the company. No matter how big or small your Organization is, your story should be woven into the tapestry of your business image and branding to build stronger ties with your target demographics. Don’t forget to mention the ‘When, Why, and How” of your foundation. By sharing your story, people can relate to you and will choose to do business with you instead of your competitors. For example, if your business is a third generation family business, this is “boast worthy.” Tell the story of your family and the company that got built as a result of the hard work and passion of the founders and the generations that came after them.

Branding Elements – In 2017, it’s all about your ‘brand.’ By tying in branding elements with your story, you’re creating something that is truly unique to only you. For instance, if you are creating and selling handcrafted goods, you might consider using your name or your image to represent the business on business cards, product packaging, letterhead, your website, and on your social media platforms. If you have an idea in mind, but you’re not sure how to implement it, the best way to turn your branding vision into a reality is by speaking with a branding professional as soon as possible. Explain to them your basic (or even complicated) branding ideas and let them help you bring them to life. The more you’re able to communicate what you want clearly, the easier it will be to target on your online and offline branding and marketing creatives. If your creative energy isn’t as sharp as you would like, you can trust that the agency that you choose to work with will have their team come up with designs that suit your requirements. Your creative team is your ally in all steps of the branding life cycle.

Colors Matter – It’s no secret that color psychology is an integral part of all branding and marketing campaigns. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of color psychology, this is primarily using specific colors to help elicit the desired response. Usually a purchase. One strong example is McDonald’s. Missing those bright golden arches is hard! While their branding and advertising campaigns have been modified and changed over the years, a few things remain constant. The arches and the colors bright yellow and red. (It should come as no surprise that both of these colors are both known to stimulate the appetite!) Other large brands that use these bright colors in their branding elements include Burger King, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, and many others. Your branding team should be able to work with you to establish a memorable and unique logo that represents your company.

Your Brand Voice – Once you’ve created your basic branding elements, you are in business! The next step in strengthening your brand is finding the ‘voice’ of your company. When I say ‘voice,’ I am referring to the tone and demeanor of language your company uses when communicating with potential clients, existing customers, and your fans on all of your social media platforms, in email, in live chat sessions, and other sales and marketing channels. By staying consistent in your communications, you help establish more trust with the people who interact with you, regardless of whether they are new and existing clients, vendors, or partners. Your brand voice is part of your organization’s identity, so choosing one that resonates with your core demographics is key to your brand. No matter whether you decide to adopt an informal or formal approach in your corporation or organizational messaging, you always want to be sure to keep things professional. Using simple pleasantries including the words “please” and “thank you” are always recommended when communicating in any capacity.

People Like To Do Business With People They Like – It should come as no surprise that people usually prefer to do business with people they like and trust. Now more than ever, personal marketing is a big part of many small businesses who have grown to much larger enterprises. If you are taking on the role of a spokesperson or a salesperson, one of the biggest ways to affect someone’s emotions is for them to like you. If you provide a valuable product or service and you have a great personality to help promote your company, there is unlimited potential for where you can go and what you can achieve!

You Don’t Have To Do It All Yourself – One of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to do everything yourself when working on your marketing and sales. Unless you have years of experience in building a brand and running a successful marketing campaign, there is no reason not to consult with an expert in the field. Colleen Eakins Design is here to help with all aspects of your advertising and marketing needs. Contact Us Today!

Directing Traffic:: Orchestrate Your Digital Marketing Efforts

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Have you ever sat and watched a police officer direct traffic? Although we may become a bit impatient with them while they do their job, our part in the matter is relatively easy. All we have to do is watch and act in the way they tell us to. They on the other hand, have to pay attention to what is going on in each lane; know who needs to turn; who is going straight; and pay close enough attention to keep traffic flowing and not get hit in the process. If they do their job well, they are met with a successfully executed flow of traffic.

I feel that digital marketing is similar in this way. Customers are like the sea of cars at that busy intersection. Some are going to go straight. Some will turn left, but they are all watching and acting in the way we ask them to. As a marketer, we have to give them that direction, because if we don’t, chaos will ensue.

In order to successfully orchestrate and direct your digital marketing efforts, you first have to ask yourself what it is that you want people to do? Do you want them to sign up for your new service, buy a new product, read your blog, or join you on a social media network?

Make that your target goal and work backward. How do you get there? What digital channels do you have available to you? Take stock of each one and its specific needs. You will need to tailor your approach on each channel, according to the strategy that works for you there.

Directing with your Digital Media

It may be helpful to create a flow chart or mind map to help you visualize your strategy. You may have a mobile app, email lists, a website and a couple of social media accounts like Twitter and Instagram. Let’s just say that your goal is to create awareness and sales for a new product.

In this example, we will pretend that you have had great success in the past with give away contests on Instagram, but not on Twitter. Your email marketing efforts have seen a high click-through rate to your website, but not a lot of conversions into sales. Your mobile app allows for sales, but so far it has only been downloaded by a few customers.

You have two direct ways that the product can be purchased: your website and on your mobile app. You need to direct traffic to these two using the other channels that you have available.

Since you have established a working strategy with contests on Instagram, you can use a contest and give away to highlight your new product. Include the link to download the app in your bio. Downloading the app and creating a new account can be one way to enter.

Use your email lists to announce the contest that is being promoted on Instagram as a way to direct them and potentially follow you on that network. Use this email to make them aware that they may be missing out on something if they are not following you on Instagram.

Later, when the contest is over and the prize has been awarded, you can see if the recipient would be willing to provide feedback about the product. If it is favorable (hopefully it is) use it as a product testimonial in another email campaign promoting the product.

On your website, you can create a landing page that is dedicated only to the sale of the new product. This is the page that any links in your email marketing campaign and social media accounts should use when promoting the product directly.

Directing with your Design

Yep, you read that right! You can direct traffic with the design of the media. Our eyes naturally move from the top of a page to the bottom, and from left to right when reading. When placing elements like text and images, keep this in mind. Place the things that have the most importance or impact, in the beginning of that route. You can also use this to somewhat dictate what a viewer sees/reads first and in what order.

If you want something to catch their attention, use color. Color can help to evoke certain emotions and feelings and call attention to something. I wish I could say that there is a magic color that will make people buy all of your products, but I can’t. However, I have found that a contrasting color to the overall color scheme of the site tends to work well. Just make sure the color is not obnoxious or that your use of color is not obnoxious. Hint: It helps a lot if it is readable.

Speaking of color, I’m sure you have heard the term “white space.” Some people hate it; some people love it. I’m one that loves it. In general, I like really clean design. Design that is uncluttered and one that feels like it can breathe and not have an asthma attack. White space helps to direct traffic. Your eye is drawn to the areas that have content, when there is a lot of area or space that is empty (white space) surrounding it. It makes it easier for you to focus on what the designer, marketer, business, etc. wants you to focus on. Use this to your advantage in your design.

By utilizing the digital channels that you have, you can direct traffic to where you want it and reach the goals that you set. Once they get to where you are leading them, use your design to help further direct them to the action you want them to commit.

 

 

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