How To Promote Your Brand Using YouTube?

Posted on: December 10th, 2015 by admin No Comments

How to Promote your Brand using YouTube

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from a YouTube presence. Marketing yourself this way, however, is not without its pitfalls. Knowing how to properly promote your brand using YouTube may take a little research. On the upside the cost is very low when compared to most other forms of marketing. A YouTube campaign, deftly cross-referencing with your branded social media, can form a useful part of an online marketing campaign. Here are a few tips on how to get it right first time :

Brand Your Content

YouTube includes a feature to allow you to brand all your video content with a logo. Be sure to use this feature consistently on all your channel output. YouTube users move rapidly about the site, surfing through the available content, barely registering when they have changed channel. A branded video at least lets them know when they have hit your content, and if they like what they see you have a chance to retain them and hopefully convert them into a subscriber.

Aim For Consistent Channel Output

Try to give your channel a cohesive feel by producing videos that have a similar length and familiar look. Aim to keep a fairly regular time interval between the content releases. Doing so will mean subscribers can have a good idea of what kind of material to expect from your channel, as well as when they can expect it.

Write a Killer Description

By default, only the first few rows of the description are visible. Therefore, this is the place to link to your other promotional material. The viewer will need to elect to click the description to be shown more, so aim to leave something intriguing on the line just above this cut-off point. Where possible, reference items in both sections of the description from within the video itself.

Create a Channel Trailer

It is definitely good practice to have a trailer video to introduce your new channel. Although it should be brief, try to ensure that it conveys the essential information about your brand, your products and what a subscriber may expect from your channel.

To really stand-out on YouTube takes real marketing skill. The pointers above should get you started. After that, the rest is down to you. Good luck!

Tags: brand, business, social media, youtube, youtube for business

How To Find Your Audience On Social Media

Posted on: December 2nd, 2015 by admin No Comments

How to find your audience on social media

Social media marketing sites are forever evolving, so new businesses may find themselves at a loss when it comes to finding their audience online. If you are venturing into social media marketing for the first time, you should consider focusing on the fundamentals. Start by reading this guide now to define your target market through the right channels.Identify your target audience
Before seeking out your audience online, you must first identify them. Find out their age group, gender, how much money they earn, their likes and dislikes as well as their location. Once you gather enough data about who your customers are, you can use this to determine where they hang out most online. For example, teenagers tend to prefer Facebook and Twitter, while people over the age of 35 mostly use LinkedIn. If you wish to target middle-aged women from urban areas, you should invest your efforts on Instagram. These are just examples of how you should identify your target audience through social media sites.Find your audience on Facebook
One of the most popular social media sites that is frequented by millions of people from around the world is Facebook. According to PewResearch, over 70 per cent of adults are drawn in to this networking site every day, so finding your potential customers should be quite simple.To get a list of Facebook users in your area who are interested in the product or service you are offering, simply type the relevant keyword in the graph search of Facebook and filter results by current city, interests, and gender.Find your potential clients on Twitter
The second most popular platform is Twitter. This social media site offers advanced search functions that allow small and large businesses to find their potential customers based on what they are tweeting. Twitter also has a variety of external tools which enable you to find your target audience based on their interests.

Find your audience on LinkedIn
By using the people search function in LinkedIn, you can narrow down your keyword search results through postal code, nonprofit interests, and industry. It is also possible to browse through millions of LinkedIn groups in order to find ones that match your brand or service. This tool allows you to check these groups’ profiles to see their activity level and size. You will need to request and receive permissions to join groups before being able to post on their discussion boards and browse their member lists for potential customers.

Tags: social media, Social Media Trends

How to use LinkedIn for your career

Posted on: November 19th, 2015 by admin No Comments

Social media is an online phenomenon that can be very difficult to avoid in your day-to-day life. Many people use it simply on a personal basis, often to post holiday photos, photos of their pets, or to tell the world what they’ve had for dinner that day.

It does, however, have much more potential than this, and can be a very useful tool for furthering your career. LinkedIn especially is a social networking site that you should be making the most of, as it is a social network aimed at professionals.

LinkedIn can basically be used as an online CV; say a bit about yourself, your current job role, jobs or work experience you’ve had in the past, your education and any qualifications you have. Many businesses now use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool, so if you have all the relevant skills and other information listed on your LinkedIn profile, then they will be able to identify you as someone who might be suitable for the job.

Connecting with people on LinkedIn is important as it increases your exposure online to the business world. Connect with your clients, colleagues, people you used to work with, people you have met whilst networking, and even people who you haven’t met, but that work in the same industry or one that you are interested in working in.

To really make your LinkedIn profile stand out to recruiters and anyone else who finds you online, it’s advisable to encourage endorsements and testimonials from your connections. On your profile, you can list your skills and then your connections can support you by endorsing these skills. This helps to add credibility to your profile and the claims you have made on it. Your connections can also recommend you by writing a testimonial. You can personally request for people to recommend you, so make sure you ask clients whom you have done a good job for to do this for you.

You can also use LinkedIn to find potential clients; connect with people in industries which you are trying to target and talk to them about the product or service that your company offers.

So, whether you’re job-hunting, looking to generate leads and gain new clients, or just to raise your profile in the business world, or increase brand awareness for your company, LinkedIn offers many opportunities to further your career.

Tags: LinkedIn, social media, Social Media Tips

How to Build Traffic to Your Facebook Page

Posted on: November 9th, 2015 by admin No Comments

Creating a Facebook page for fans makes your marketing strategy successful, as long as you can build traffic to it. The key to success of a Facebook fan page is quality targets. If you’re not getting as much traffic as you’d hoped, perhaps it’s time to change your strategy. Here are some tips on how to build traffic to your Facebook page.

Make sure you have a good stream of shareable content on your page

If your website content never changes or gets updated, you’ll struggle to generate traffic to it. People no longer post links to the same page on their websites. These days, it’s all about content marketing. Posting fresh content is not just important for social media marketing, but it’s also for search engine optimisation. You don’t have to post articles every day of the week to generate traffic. As long as you post an informative article once or twice a week, it will benefit your website greatly.

Make your content easy to share

Once you have posted new content on your website, make it possible to be shared by your potential fans or followers. Facebook has a share plugin button as the reader scrolls through the content. This button appears on the side of the post and floats along the page.

Mention your Facebook page on your blog

WordPress plugins allow you to display your social media page directly on your blog. If you already have a steady stream of followers who read your blogs often, then it makes sense to include a call-to-action through the sidebar of your blog. This way, when a reader clicks the ‘Like us on Facebook’ link, they’ll get sent directly to your Facebook page.

Promote your Facebook page on Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social media sites

One of the easiest ways to promote your page is by attracting the fans you already have on other social network sites. While this may need extra time on your part, especially if you intend on promoting your Facebook page on YouTube, it’s still well worth the effort to attract subscribers. Your Facebook page can potentially get hundreds or even thousands of likes through YouTube and MySpace. These social media sites are an excellent way to promote the product or service that appears in your website.

Tags: Facebook, social media, Social Media Tips

10 Instagram Marketing Tips to Make People Love Your Brand

Posted on: November 4th, 2015 by admin No Comments

Social media is becoming increasingly popular and Instagram has proven to be exceptionally successful, with over 300 million users – this is why it’s a great platform for you to get your brand name recognised:

Post appropriate content
Whilst it’s important to sell your brand in a professional manner, you don’t want to bore users by being ‘work work work’ all the time. You should keep content fresh ad engaging by posting both serious and fun posts.

Not just photos
Instagram is also great for videos up to 15 seconds long, as there are times when a photo simply can’t capture the beauty of a moment.
Follow back
If people are interested in your brand enough to follow your account, it’s only polite to follow back. Obviously it’s not feasible to follow every single person, but it’s nice to acknowledge their support.

Stay relevant
All content should be relevant to your brand otherwise it can come across as a pointless post.

Offer something
Launching a content or giveaway is a great way to promote your brand as it increases awareness and a fun way to give back to your fans.

Network
Instagram is a great way to network and interact with your followers by liking their photos or replying to their comments.

Hashtags everywhere
Hashtags are a great way to get your brand name out there and then more you use them, the more your brand will be seen.

Unique content
Post unique content! there’s nothing worse than copying an image your competitor has posted, it not only makes you look silly but will also make you come across as uncreative and unoriginal.

Connecting social media
A great way to share your instagram posts is to share it on other social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter – this is a great way to integrate all your social media platforms and ensure maximum coverage.

Show you care
Show you care about your employees by featuring them on your instagram account, as a way of showing you acknowledge their hard work, this may mean more to an employee than you think. Users will also no doubt enjoy seeing the faces behind the brand they love and support.

Tags: instagram, social media

How to Craft the Perfect Tweet

Posted on: October 29th, 2015 by admin No Comments

In the recent years, Twitter has become an important marketing tool for business brands of various firms all over the world. A perfect tweet has the power to attract massive customer base but only if you choose your words carefully. To write a perfect tweet, you need to link your business goal(s) with your social delivery content.

A tweet is described as perfect when it meets the following key objectives. Does the tweet amplify the story? Is it interesting? Can it be read? Secondly, It should be as engaging as possible enough to make it even trend. You will need people share the story for their followers to see. Lastly, it should be able to convert. Your readers need to complete some conversion related activities such as a link to visit the registration page.

There are various tips you could try to make a perfect tweet. These tips base on the analysis of 129,300 from the top 100 international brands.

1.Use of pictures to make the tweets catchy.

Pictures make the reader interested in the story behind them. You could also share links alongside photos to make them more noticeable.

2.Use of hashtags and links.

Hashtags are important as they lead to trends on Twitter. At any time, you should strive to make your brand trend. However, don’t hashtag overload as it reduces the reader’s level of engagement.

3.Urgency.

Tweets containing ‘right now’ or ‘today’ average higher engagement than the brand average.

4.Maintain frequency of tweeting.

Performing brands averaged to tweeting at least four times a day. The information becomes much more memorable to the reader.

5.Tweet longer.

Tweets under 60 characters are less attractive than tweets with more than 120 characters and, therefore, one should strive to use at least much of the 140 characters and be more informative.

6.Use native image types.

pic.twitter.com automatically embeds, unlike other image types.

7.Use an acceptable image size.

All images in your fees should use a proper aspect ratio. Emphasis could now be on the essential features of the brand eg., a product.

Tags: social media, Social Media Tips, tweets, Twitter

How To Market Yourself On LinkedIn

Posted on: October 13th, 2015 by admin No Comments

The best advice for marketing yourself on LinkedIn is the same advice that translates to all social media networks, which is that you need to create a strategic plan. This plan should include what you intend to achieve, and more importantly should contain a time budget.

What Is A Time Budget?

Decide how long you are going to spend on the network per session and build this into your strategic plan. All social media networks are time vampires that will drink down your productive time with no real-world benefit to yourself. Know what you want to achieve, set a budget for your time and stick to it.

What If You Need Longer Than Your Time Budget Allows?

Your first instinct may be to break your time budget and spend longer on LinkedIn. Another thing you can do is increase the amount of time you allot for LinkedIn. The best thing you can do is become more efficient at achieving your goals. You should even consider using a timesaving program to help you. Try a free account with HootSuite to start and see if that improves your efficiency and time management.

Become The Person You Want To Be

Honesty is always the best policy, but why not bend the truth a little on LinkedIn. For example, if you are a graphic designer working from home, would it be so terrible if people thought you worked out of an office? If you spent 6 months working as a chef, would it be so bad if your profile said you worked 1.5yrs as a chef?

More Active Profiles Get Noticed More

Spend ten minutes per day working on your profile and making connections and it is better than spending ten hours on it at the beginning of the month. The more you show up on people’s radar, then the more credibility you earn.

Measure Your Metrics And Learn From Them

If your plan states goals, you cannot perpetually improve your marketing if you are not measuring your results. You do not need fancy analytic programs. You can use metrics as simple as how many connections you made this month, or how many warm leads you achieved.

Market Your Profile Online

A link to your LinkedIn profile should be part of your email signature, and it should certainly be linked to your Google+ personal profile if you want Google to help you build your online reputation. Mention your profile on as many of your online actions as possible. Think of your profile link as your online brand in that it appears everywhere you do. After all, if other professionals want to contact you, they will feel safer (for want of a better word) doing it through LinkedIn.

Market Your Name & Profile Offline

Put your name and profile information on your business cards (your cardboard and digital ones). Have it stencilled on the back of your laptop; add it into your offline visual marketing such as on the side of your van, your posters and so forth. Do not make it the key feature of your offline marketing, i.e. do not fill your van with flyers your LinkedIn profile details, just slip your information into your offline marketing in a subtle way. For example, you could give your contact details as your phone number, office address, email address and LinkedIn profile.

Tags: LinkedIn, social media, Social Media Tips

How To Increase Your Followers On Twitter

Posted on: October 7th, 2015 by admin No Comments

With the internet being such a huge playing field, it can often be difficult to stand out in the crowd. One important way of spreading your message and getting noticed is to increase the number of followers you have on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and Linked In. More followers generally means higher awareness, boosted sales and an enhanced reputation for your business. Use the following handy hints and tips for a fast and consistent growth of followers.

First and foremost, add a ’follow’ button to your website to not only make it clear that you can be found on Twitter but to make it easier for people to go straight to your profile. Don’t just assume that potential followers will be able to find you on Twitter – make things easier for them by including your @username on all correspondence, emails and business cards.

Posting great content is a must. People want interesting information, not the details of every mundane aspect of your life. Research has proved that those tweeters who provide followers with engaging information have twice as many followers as those who post comments related to themselves. Always remember to remain positive and happy as nobody wants to read posts that are continuously depressing, morbid, cynical or aggressive.

Whilst tweeting in bursts can have a negative impact on the number of followers you have, tweeting consistently and on a regular basis is key to increasing your number of followers. Research has shown that people who post comments in bursts are unfollowed far more often than those who post at regular intervals. Try using a tweet-scheduling service to help with this.

Engaging with people will certainly increase your number of followers. Followers want interaction, so find out what potential followers want by collecting feedback and acting on it. Respond to comments and retweet positive posts in order to build a rapport with your followers. Commenting on relevant news and tweets will inject your business into existing conversations and put your voice out there.

As well as gaining more followers, it is equally as important to hold on to your existing ones. One way of doing this is to offer followers exclusive promotions and content only available on Twitter. Known as Twixclusives, these Twitter-only promotions can be used alongside countdowns and teaser tweets to compel followers to pay more attention to your business.

Tags: Advertising, social media, Social Media Tips, Twitter

3 Questions to ask your next social media marketing partner?

Posted on: September 28th, 2015 by admin No Comments

The ubiquity of social media in the modern business landscape means that an effective online marketing strategy is crucial to expanding your reach to the desired level. Going it alone, however, is a solution that rarely brings positive results. Sure, it’s easy enough to set up a couple of small-scale Facebook/Twitter campaigns, but that’s only the beginning. Before too long, you’re bogged down by other tasks and your social media marketing becomes neglected and effectual. As such, it might well be necessary to bring in a partner to help manage this side of the business, but before you commit to anything here are a few things you should probably discuss with them.

1. “What kind of timeframe are we looking at here?”

First, and some might argue most importantly, you need to establish a timeline for your potential new social media marketing campaign(s). An all-too-common point of contention between partners is discordant expectations with regards to how long certain things may take to be achieved, so it’s good to lay this out early on. You want to know how long the campaigns are going to take to go live, how long your partner’s campaigns typically take to see real results, and other information of a similar ilk.

2. “How do you define ‘success’ in terms of marketing campaigns?”

Another important point of discussion to minimise the likelihood of conflict further down the line concerns what both parties consider to be a “successful” marketing campaign – is it measured in clicks, the number of followers/fans, or something else? The last thing you want is your partner to declare the project to be over and done with before you’ve started seeing any real results, so it’s good to know early on what you’re going to be working towards.

3. “Can your work integrate with our existing CMS/CMR platforms?”

Obviously you want your social media marketing solution to be a cost-effective one, and key to this is ensuring that any potential partner is able to implement their work into your existing frameworks for content management and customer relations. If they aren’t capable of doing this, it’s important that this is made clear so that you can be aware of any additional charges for bringing this knowledge in or, in an extreme circumstance, finding someone else who canwork with what you already have.

Tags: business, marketing, social media

How to Make the Most Out of Twitter Advertising

Posted on: September 16th, 2015 by admin No Comments

Twitter is second only to Facebook in terms of its popularity as a social networking site. As of September 2015, Twitter experiences an estimated 310,000 unique monthly visitors. As a result, whilst primarily a social networking site, Twitter can be an excellent platform from which a company can advertise. However, not all Twitter advertising is successful, which is why it is important know exactly how to make the most of Twitter advertising.

Be active!

You need to be active. Despite being seemingly obvious it is often overlooked. Not only should you be tweeting regularly, but you must make sure your profile is aesthetically pleasing and up-to-date. New and relevant content increases the credibility and exposure of your brand. In addition, make sure you hashtag! Hashtagging enables users who would not otherwise look at your profile to view the posts that you make. Hashtagging is effectively a way of indexing yourself, and doing so effectively, can help your brand profit tremendously.

Utilise photos and videos.

If you understand the basic concept of Twitter you will know that there is a 150 character limit per tweet. This means you are fairly limited with what you can say in a single tweet. However, as they say: a picture paints a thousand words. Therefore it is important to use multimedia to your advantage. Photos and videos can be used to be create both entertaining and creative forms of advertising. Visuals are becoming ever more important in social media, as seen in the rise of social networks such as Instagram.

Try not to appear like a salesman.

Perhaps rather counter-intuitive is the need to refrain from appearing too much like a salesman. It is better to keep the tone of your Twitter advertising conversational and really spend time researching and developing calls to action that deliver results without sounding too demanding.

Create content that is of true value.

The previous tips are relatively easy to follow – things that everyone can do. However, arguably the most important way to effectively utilise Twitter advertising is to create unique and compelling content – something that is much harder to do, and not something that has a set of guidelines to follow. Your tweets will be appearing alongside millions of other tweets, many of which will be in direct competition. It is therefore imperative to create content that stands out from the crowd, and offers something truly valuable to whomever may see it.

Tags: social media, Social Media Tips, Twitter, twitter advertising

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