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Social media is one of the most powerful tools a business can use in order to create brand awareness, generate more traffic, and engage with customers. It's been estimated that about 2/3 of American adults are on social media at least once a day.

However, many companies fail to get a higher return on investment (ROI) from their social media efforts. This is typically because they simply don't know what they're doing. Listed below are seven strategies you can implement today. Your company can get a higher ROI from social media starting today.

Tweet by Seth Horus

1. Create a social media marketing plan.

Every business owner and marketer should create a social media marketing plan. With that in hand, they'll remember the goals of their campaigns from start to finish.

First things first. You need to decide what your desired outcome is. You can't reach it if you don't know where it is. Once your goal has been established, you must determine which platforms will be most effective in reaching this particular demographic or group of people.

This may vary by industry. However, LinkedIn tends to work well as an online portfolio site while Instagram is better for making businesses appear more "personal." Make sure that all employees are on board with the new strategy and have time allocated daily/weekly for each platform being used.

2. Measure your results.

You can't do much social media ROI optimization if you don't know your existing ROI. This is why it's important to measure your results and set time-bound goals for yourself. For example, produce five new posts per week, post a minimum of one photo/day, etc.

It may be helpful to use Google Analytics or another platform that will allow you to track the engagement rates on each social media site as well as where in the world viewers are coming from. Analytics can help you optimize by targeting markets with higher ROIs and eliminating ones that don't provide much return.

Don’t forget about internal measurement tools either. These benchmarks can show how your employees interact both positively and negatively and affect company culture, brand image, etc. Email tracking can provide additional insight here since email interactions often result from social media connections. You might also want to consider using NPS or other surveys periodically to see what your customers like and don't like about your company.

Tweet by Honey Social

3. Post content that is interesting to your target audience.

Prior to posting, make sure that you know your target audience extremely well. You want to post content that will consistently appeal to them.

Be sure you know the latest trends in your industry. Create posts around those topics. They won't get old or stale as quickly, which can result in losing followers over time.

Consider posting about events happening within your company that could benefit customers. These could include new product releases, company announcements such as the updating of a privacy policy, etc. These can be another way of showing potential followers how committed your business is to providing value for them via social media.

Maybe you’ve chosen a niche market with an active community such as foodies who love cooking or pet owners who love to share photos of their pets online. This type of engagement strategy may work perfectly for better social media ROI.

If your business is based on appointments, make sure you transform your social media profile into a method for booking meetings. Apps such as Booksy let you incorporate a book button into your profiles on social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Google My Business.

4. Engage with others on social media by commenting and liking their posts.

Keep in mind that if you only post content and never engage with your followers, you may come across as too self-promotional. If you’re posting about a new product or service, for example, mention how customers can find out more information on the company website.

Consider which types of posts will resonate most with people in your niche market. They'll be more eager to like and comment on them, especially if they contain photos or short videos.

If relevant, add hashtags within your caption when uploading images to Instagram or Facebook to help increase visibility. However, be sure not to overuse tags!

Engaging followers helps establish credibility and rapport. This could lead prospects into a higher ROI down the road by generating leads via their social media network.

Consider a contest to engage your followers and increase visibility. Incentivize participants with something related to your company such as product samples, sweepstakes, etc.

Pay attention to what gets shared on Facebook and Twitter other than your content. Segmenting those audiences will help you identify key influencers in your niche market who could help generate more ROI on social media channels.

According to Zonka Feedback, churn can increase by up to 15% if businesses fail to respond to customers over social media.

Tweet by Outshine Snacks

5. Share relevant content from other pages in the same industry or category as yours.

While this may seem counterintuitive, going for a partnership with a complementary company in the same industry or category actually increases your chances of generating new leads. Of course, this doesn't mean sharing any and all content that matches your industry. Just the really good stuff.

Make sure to only share posts that can appeal to your customers and are in accordance with your company's values and culture.

6. Be consistent. Post at least once per day, but no more than three times per day.

When it comes to social media ROI, quality always matters more than quantity. You won't want to post too often. That can start to feel spammy and irritate your followers. However, you also don't want to post too infrequently, either.

It's a common misconception that posts have diminishing returns the more frequently they're shared. It's actually quite the opposite. When you share content consistently over time, people are more likely to remember it from one day or a week ago. This is a result of the exposure they've had, head-on, with your messaging over time. That means every individual tweet has an equal chance of being seen by someone who didn't notice it before.

The optimum frequency for posting is between once per day and three times per day. Of course, this depends on your audience size and the volume of entries posted each day. This will differ from industry to industry, too. Looking at what your competition is doing is always a great benchmark! It can let you know where to start.

7. Start using lead nurturing.

One of the best ways to leverage social media is by starting to use lead nurturing tools like HubSpot. Tools such as this are great for following up with potential customers and building relationships over a period of time in order to turn them into leads or clients. Again, make sure that you don't come across as "spammy."

Another technique of lead nurturing is being active in social media communities. Facebook groups work great, as do LinkedIn discussions. Join in on conversations. Share insights from your blog posts with the group when you post them.

Social Media ROI: Wrapping Things Up

To make the most of your social media marketing plan, be sure to measure results. This will help you understand what content is working well and which topics are less popular.

Once you know this information, adjust accordingly. Post more often on those subjects that resonate with customers or followers. It's also important to engage with others by liking their posts and commenting when necessary. Share other relevant content from similar pages like yours in order to grow your audience base organically over time.

Lastly, don't forget about lead nurturing. There are many benefits for digital marketers if they use these strategies correctly. Give them a try and adjust as you go.

Social media marketing is one of the most effective tools for connecting directly with your audience. B2B and B2C companies can benefit from effective social media content, but one of the biggest challenges for many companies is finding the time and expertise internally to get it done.

That’s where a social media content provider comes in. These companies can provide valuable help, especially if you have a small marketing team or limited resources. However, it’s critical that you find the right social media content partner who can provide high-quality content that helps you achieve your goals. Unfortunately, not every social media content provider is a good one, so here are 20 tips to help you spot an untrustworthy partner.

1. They post duplicated content.

Search engines and algorithms prefer original content and may actually punish your social media page and rankings if you use a content provider who posts the same content on several different pages or platforms.

2. They create low quality content.

A problematic social media content provider is one that doesn’t care about the quality of the content they offer. If there are clear misspellings, grammatical mistakes or just poorly written copy, look elsewhere.

3. The content is not relevant to your audience.

The right social media content partner will care about your target audience. They should request information about your target audience and goals so they can create engaging and relevant content.

4. They don’t request information about your brand, voice or tone.

It takes time and effort to build a brand. When it’s done correctly, the information you put online (through your website and social media channels) will reflect your tone and voice. Your content partner should be interested in the voice you have created and be capable of producing social media content that reflects it.

5. They don’t have metrics for measuring success.

One of the benefits of using social media and other digital platforms is the ability to track and measure success in terms of engagement and outcomes. If your social media content writer doesn’t seem interested in outcomes, look for another provider that wants to help you achieve success.

6. They don’t provide regular reports.

You will only know if your content is performing well through reports, so make sure you can get regular updates on how well the content is performing. Then, identify how you can provide feedback if it’s not achieving your goals.

7. They focus on the wrong outcomes or metrics.

Your social media content provider may have some ideas and can provide suggestions on what metrics to measure. However, they should ultimately defer to you and your team on what you most want to track based on your goals.

8. They focus exclusively on growing followers or generating likes.

Some social media companies believe that the only metrics that matter are total followers or high volumes of “likes'' on your posts. While it’s great to grow your audience and encourage engagement, it’s also important to have a plan for what you will do when you get that large following. If the goal is a never ending pursuit of more followers, it might not be the right strategy.

9. They don’t discuss their tactics for getting new followers or post engagement.

An untrustworthy social media content provider won’t discuss their tactics with you. Some companies may have proprietary information about their tactics and prefer not to share all the details, but they should be willing to explain it in basic terms.

10. They make unrealistic promises.

As the old saying goes, something that sounds too good to be true probably is. That applies to your social media content partner too. If a sales pitch promises sky-high rankings or makes specific guarantees about reaching the number one spot on Google, that is usually a red flag. Companies that play by the rules can usually promise measurable results but not a guaranteed spot in search engine rankings.

11. They won’t let you see the analytics behind their positive reports.

Analytics reports are a complex web of numbers and information. The right social media content provider will help you understand the numbers and how they are achieving those great results. If they are hiding something, it’s probably because they’re presenting misleading metrics that show things in a positive (but inaccurate) light.

12. They only offer limited content services.

Content is a broad term, and the right social media content partner will be able to fulfill a wide variety of content needs. If your partner only provides a single service, consider looking elsewhere for someone who has more experience and expertise.

13. They use outdated strategies.

Like much of our world, digital media is rapidly changing. It’s important for your content marketing partner to change with the times. If they still use strategies that you learned about several years ago and are slow to adapt to changes, it’s time to move on.

14. They want you to sign long-term contracts right away.

Your content marketing partner must be the right fit for you. They should understand that concept and not try to force you to sign a long-term contract until you both know it’s going to work out.

15. They promise "proprietary" services or software for a premium price but won’t share any details.

Be cautious of any content provider who tells you they have some super-secret formula or software that is worth paying a premium price. If it’s proprietary, they probably won’t share any details with you, which makes it hard for you to verify whether it’s worthwhile.

16. They don’t want to take your calls (or your feedback).

Every content relationship should have some give and take. While you want to trust that your content provider will give you great content all the time, sometimes you will need to offer constructive feedback to make it better. If they’re unwilling to listen, move on to a new partner.

17. They send content clearly not written by a native language speaker.

Getting content from someone who speaks the native language of your audience will be more authentic and can help you connect with people. Work with content marketing companies that have native-language writers for the best results.

18. They make a lot of promises and never seem to deliver.

Sometimes a company just can’t deliver on what they promised, and it’s your brand that will suffer. If your social media content provider never seems to be able to get the results they promised, they may not have been truthful in their sales pitch.

19. They miss deadlines or can’t keep up with your needs.

It’s critical to have a partner that can deliver what you need on time and on budget. If they can't, you can’t trust them to help you build your brand.

20. There is no clear strategy behind what they are doing.

Content strategy is almost as important as the quality of the content itself. Make sure you’re working with a company that understands the importance of a good social media strategy and can provide relevant content to get the results you need.

The bottom line

Your social media content is a critical aspect of your overall content strategy. It’s important to find the right social media content provider to help you achieve your goals and build your brand.

Influencer marketing has become an effective way to sell products to relevant demographics. Influencers flood social media with personalized content detailing their lives and interests. By connecting with like-minded individuals, social media influencers humanize the brands they represent.

The question is, how can you tell real influencers from imposters? The key is to look for relevance. Social media influencers who are relevant in their space are worth investing in. Here’s how to find the right influencer for your brand:

Look for Organic Reach

The first thing many businesses look for when choosing a social media influencer is how many followers they have. While this is a solid indicator of their value, it can be fool’s gold at times. Some influencers purchase followers to up their count, making their numbers look better than they actually are. 

What you want to look for is organic reach and engagement. An influencer with 100,000 followers with a 90% engagement rate will reach about as many people as an influencer with 1,000,000 and less than 10% engagement. Not only that, but smaller influencers tend to be more affordable and more effective.

Look out, in particular, for “follow for a follow” techniques. This is a cheap way to inflate a follower count without developing an actual audience. If an influencer is following tons of people, it likely means that their own follower base isn’t of the highest quality.

Match Up Audiences

The audience of your influencer of choice should closely match up to your target audience. If you’re looking for an influencer to market your new line of beauty products, choosing an influencer who shares knife-throwing videos might not be the best choice.

Look at influencers’ content to get a feel of who watches their videos and what they’re interested in. You can also dive into comment sections and followers to scope out their audience. If their follower base lines up with your own audience, you will have found a relevant representative for your brand.

Analyze Past Partnerships

Forming brand partnerships is a vital part of the financial life of an influencer. That’s why it’s likely that most of the influencers you’re considering have had prior brand partnerships. Analyzing these arrangements allows you to see just how successful past campaigns with this influencer have been.

Look at a few posts with brand sponsorships. How does the engagement and viewership of these posts compare to their others? If their brand-related content performed well, that’s a good sign for you. If it fell flat, try to determine why before ruling them out completely.

Also, take note of what percentage of an influencer’s content is sponsored. An influencer is more trustworthy if they share a lot of authentic and personal content with some sponsorships scattered throughout, as opposed to only sharing sponsored content.

Check Their Voice and Values

Social media sites are great for sharing content authentically. To develop a brand, either personal or for business, the influencer’s voice should be genuine and consistent. If it’s not, they may not be right for your brand.

An influencer that sounds like someone different in every post won’t be as reliable as one with an established voice. Their steadiness will support your brand as you develop your own voice, which should at least be in the same ballpark as your influencer partners.

Besides consistency, make sure potential partners’ values line up with your company mission. This way, you won’t have to worry about statements or comments that may put your brand in a bad light. Audiences can be unforgiving if they think your brand has “sold out.”

Focus on Quality

A relevant social media influencer puts time and effort into their content. This will be apparent in their copywriting and content editing, as well as the uniqueness of the content they share. These influencers will be more successful than others who rely on content that’s rehashed, copied, or unimaginative.

Are you impressed by an influencer’s content, or does it leave a lot to be desired? If you like how their posts look and can imagine your brand being featured in them, then you have found a relevant option.

Another important aspect of content creation is frequency. An influencer with a haphazard or infrequent posting schedule will not be as relevant as a more reliable one. Take note of the frequency of their posting to make sure they’re staying on top of relevant trends.

Prioritize Professionalism

Pay attention to how potential influencer partners communicate with you. Are they agreeable and willing to work with you? Are they clear about their expectations? These are signs of a social media influencer you’ll want to work with for the long haul.

Influencers who fail to respond promptly or take a “my way or the highway” approach aren’t just difficult to work with. They likely won’t help you reach your goals. Just as you would with any other business partnership, make sure they’re a good match.

How successful your influencer marketing efforts are will depend on how carefully you select your influencer partners. Gauge their relevance, test before you trust, and above all, get the agreement in writing. If they don’t perform, you’ll be glad you did. 

Social media is more than just a platform for connecting with loved ones and watching funny cat videos. Businesses can use social media to reach new customers, generate sales leads, and hone their brand image. But to achieve any of those outcomes, they have to be relevant.

Staying in the loop on social media is easier said than done. Trends come and go faster than ever, as do consumer expectations. Companies that fall behind rarely catch up. 

Don’t take the risk of irrelevance. Here’s how to keep your company relevant on social media:

Choose Keywords Wisely

Just as search engines do, social media sites use algorithms to provide their users with personalized content. Keywords have a big impact on this algorithm, and targeting the right terms can boost your visibility. More exposure means more relevance.

You can research keywords that fit your brand, products, and campaign to see how they’re performing on social media currently. Keywords with higher usage will have greater competition—but also provide a greater chance to get exposure and relevance.

Publish Content Consistently

Your social media pages will stagnate without content. If your page has nothing on it, or the last post was from last year, customers will not find the page to be credible or relevant. 

Too much content, on the other hand, can be overwhelming. Strike a balance. Posting two or three times per week, while commenting on others’ content every day, is about right.

Regardless, your content needs to be consistent in style. Find a voice that can be used for multiple audiences and sets your posts apart from the competition. Consistent imaging is also a critical part of a coherent social media presence. 

Target the Right Audiences

Social media allows you to target individuals whose interests fit your campaigns. Focusing on key demographics helps your content resonate with the people it’s meant for. 

For example, if you are an outdoor clothing brand, you’ll be more relevant to groups of people who like camping and hiking than those who are interested in home decor and pottery. Outdoor enthusiasts will find your brand more relevant if it speaks to people with related interests.

Embrace Different Platforms

Focusing all of your social media efforts on a single platform might net you a large audience there, but what about people who prefer other social media? To expand your reach, don’t be afraid to dabble in multiple platforms.

Some consumers prefer Instagram for its focus on high-quality images. Others flock to Facebook for its groups and media agnosticism. These are only two of many popular platforms, each with its own format and demographic mix. Familiarize yourself with each one, and make an effort to reach your customers wherever they are. 

Look to Influencers

Influencer marketing is an inexpensive shortcut to relevance on social media. Many consumers trust social media influencers who reflect them more so than the marketing team of a global corporation. To really hit home with new customers, look at partnering with influencers.

Many partnerships are simple: Influencers will share your product with their followers in exchange for compensation, often determined by the number of followers or viewership each influencer brings to the table. 

Use exclusive offers to judge influencers’ relevance to your strategy. Provide a unique coupon code to each influencer to help you see how many purchases they’re able to push your way. 

Do your research before committing to an influencer. You’re looking for relevant people whose comments or conduct won’t tarnish your brand image. Choose wisely, and you’ll find it that much easier to build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Social media can empower your business to find relevance in an increasingly crowded market. Engage the right communities online, and watch them strengthen and grow your brand in ways you alone never could. 

The social media landscape is becoming increasingly competitive. Small businesses and startups alike can struggle to fend off the might of wealthy and established rivals - which is why it’s vital to invest wisely in time and resources alike. 

Luckily, social media marketing can benefit marketers who are willing to work smarter in order to stand out and see tangible results. 

As a marketer, it’s vital that you investigate which strategies actually work on different social platforms in order to engage with audiences online. Given the level of competition out there, it’s imperative that companies quickly learn exactly what audiences want to hear from them. 

Social media marketing can make small businesses globally visible and can teach marketers a wealth of information about prospective clients and customers alike. Given its clear importance, it’s worth respecting the power of UTM parameters - a tool that’s capable of showing the big picture when it comes to understanding social marketing campaigns. 

Understanding Your Urchins

Urchin Tracking Modules (UTM) parameters might sound excessively opaque as a name for the many of us who aren’t blessed with fluency in the world of tech, but they’re actually fairly simple and easy tools to use - regardless of your level of expertise. 

UTM parameters exist as short text codes that can be added to links embedded into social media posts, or any text for that matter. They provide plenty of benefits and help users track the value of social marketing programs and campaigns alike. UTMs can also bring marketers accurate data on traffic and where it’s arriving from. They can also help users to conduct A/B tests on individual posts to see which ones are best received among audiences. 

Contrary to what some marketers believe, there’s no need to find a programmer to set up UTM parameters or to get them working efficiently on your website and social media profiles. It’s possible to construct the right set of parameters all by yourself. 

Fundamentally, UTM parameters are pre-defined text codes that are added to a URL in order to track valuable data pertaining to visitors and traffic sources. For example, here’s a snapshot of a website address with UTM parameters in place:

https://example.com?utm_source=news4&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=spring-summer

In a nutshell, UTM parameters refer to all text that comes after the question mark (as shown in the URL above. These snippets are valuable to businesses and marketers alike because they work alongside analytics platforms to bring companies a detailed picture of how their social media strategies are performing. 

There are five different UTM parameters that can be set. The first three are essential in UTM tracking links, while the latter is exclusively used alongside PPC campaigns

The first UTM parameter you’ll need to learn relates to your campaign source. This relates to the social network, search engine, backlink, or multimedia link that’s driving the traffic towards your website. 

If your campaign has been set up on Instagram, for example, this would be the source. Content campaigns on company blogs and email newsletters can also act as sources. 

The sample code for this particular UTM parameter would read utm_source=facebook, for instance. 

The next parameter to consider relates to the campaign medium in use. This keeps track of the channel that’s driving the traffic, whether it’s social media, PPC, email, or another source. The sample code for a campaign medium that comes in the form of a Facebook advertising campaign will read utm_medium=fb_ad.

The final organic parameter refers to the campaign name. This is designed so that marketers can keep track of individual campaigns so that they can be better tracked and analyzed. 

For example, this would appear in a sample UTM code as something like utm_campaign=signup_offer, and would be tracked differently to parallel campaigns like utm_campaign=spring_sale.

For paid campaigns, it’s possible to set up a UTM parameter that tracks a campaign term. The terms will directly relate to the keywords that you’ve paid to show for and will appear as follows: utm_term=chicago_pizza - provided your chosen keywords included Chicago and pizza. 

Finally, the list of UTM parameters is rounded off by campaign content. This particular parameter gives marketers the power to track different advertisements within a campaign. For example, this would appear as something like utm_content=yellow_banner, which would descriptively differentiate from other facets of a paid campaign. 

It’s possible to combine multiple parameters together within the same link. Significantly, parameters must come after a question mark, and each one must be separated by an ampersand (&). 

Combining all of our sample UTM parameters shown in the previous five points, our final URL would look something like this: 

http://www.example.com?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fb_ad&utm_campaign=signup_offer&utm_term=chicago_pizza&utm_content=yellow_banner

Looks a little bit clunky, doesn’t it? Not to worry. URLs can be shortened to appear less clumsily thought up. 

You also don’t need to add these parameters manually. There are plenty of great tools out there that can help automatically generate UTM URLs.

Getting to Grips With UTM Parameters

The most efficient way of setting up UTM parameters is first to make sure you have an account in place with Google Analytics. Using Google Analytics is free - just make sure you specify that the website you’re tracking is indeed your property.

After that, be sure to choose your website’s industry and get yourself a Tracking ID. Finally, copy and paste the global site tag on your website. 

Adding Parameters to Social Media

The brilliance of Google Analytics is that it can be called upon for the majority of the process involved in adding UTM parameters to your URLs. Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder is one of the finest tools online for skyrocketing the performance of social media campaigns. 

You can use Google Analytics when learning how to set up UTM parameters.

On the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder, enter the URL of the page you plan on linking to, then fill the relevant fields in with the parameters that you’re intent on tracking. 

Once this is done, simply scroll down to find the automatically generated UTM URL. There’s an added option of converting the URL into a much more digestible shorter link. While this option isn’t necessary, it would create more of a manageable and visually appealing alternative. 

Finally, you’re free to paste the link onto the relevant social media accounts in order to begin generating relevant clicks. 

Tracking and Tracing Your Social Performance

Once your campaigns are set up, return to Google Analytics to monitor their respective progress. This can be done by navigating to the Reports tab before clicking on Acquisition and then Campaigns. 

Here, you can access a whole host of different campaigns that have been created with trackable URLs - with easy-to-follow traffic and conversion metrics

To simplify the process, you can delve into free analytics tools like Finteza, which enable you to filter out social traffic by things like Campaign, Medium, and Term - a pretty handy option. 

Simply connect your website and go to Sources > Social.

Doing this provides marketers with an unparalleled level of control in monitoring the performance of their campaigns, as well as comparing and contrasting the respective performance of different approaches to social media marketing. 

Quality content can reign supreme, whether it’s positioned on a dedicated blog or Facebook account, for instance. However, the high-quality compare and contrast analytics presented through the use of UTM parameters can really allow users to test how varied messages are received online. 

UTM parameters can produce a large amount of data, but luckily, the presentation of this data is easy to follow and very actionable. UTM tracking data can be easily exported into PDF, Excel, Google Sheets, and .csv formats for ease of use. 

To get the most out of your respective data, it’s important to discuss with other decision-makers in your business what your marketing goals really are. Do you want conversions? Traffic? Or other forms of engagement? 

In an online landscape that’s becoming increasingly competitive, UTM parameters may not single-handedly aid you in the battle to overcome your rivals, but they can certainly make all the difference in terms of spending your budget wisely and acting on intelligent insights. 

While it’s imperative to resonate with the right audience online, through a combination of Google Analytics and the right set of parameters, it’s possible to forensically measure your ROI while constantly refining your social media strategy in order to only spend money appealing to the right markets at the right time. 

If you’re marketing a small business or a startup, spending the same amount of money as your most affluent competitors will be out of the question. But with the adoption of UTM parameters, you can make your campaigns exponentially smarter, and sometimes wise budgeting can make all the difference in outsmarting your rivals. 

With the onset of social media marketing and PPC campaigns with promised wider audiences and greater organic traffic, email marketing has begun to take a hit.

Forbes, in this article, makes an apt analogy: they compare email marketing to a goose that gives golden eggs. Like that one in the story, remember - the one that gave golden eggs every day? The moral is more or less the same: don’t kill the goose that gives golden eggs.

Social media marketing, likewise, has become a thing of the decade, and for good reason. With almost 3 billion people around the world using social media, there’s a large audience glued to their screens 24/7 - and the clever business only has to target the right people in the right way to make an impact.

When it comes to small businesses, choosing between email and social media marketing is out of the question. While it’s a good thing that you are investing in SEO services for small businesses, you can’t ignore email and social media marketing from SEO strategies.

Because when it comes to small businesses, you need to go all out in order to establish your place in a rapidly growing market. The SEO strategy for your small business, therefore, should include both: email and social media marketing.

Email Marketing in the Times of a Global Pandemic

Now, more than at any other time, it’s as if businesses have suddenly woken up to the importance of email marketing. With physical businesses shut and marketing strategists scrambling for ideas, many have turned to reviving email marketing. The truth is, though, that you aren’t the only one doing it. Almost all small businesses have resorted to this technique, and your email might just get lost among the barrage of emails the customer is getting.

On the other hand, had you been doing email marketing consistently - had you already been sending emails to your prospective customers, they would have been used to receiving emails from you. In other words, they would have been more receptive to actually opening and reading your emails.

However, this should not discourage you from sending out emails to your prospective customers during the pandemic. We call it crisis email marketing, and it ensures one thing above all:  that your customers don’t forget you. When physical visibility becomes out of the question, you must resort to digital visibility. As a small business, you need to solidify your digital presence in order to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Combining Email Marketing with Company Growth

As a small business, you are no doubt intent on both: exposure and expansion of your target audience, and monetary progress. According to the book Email Marketing: An Hour a Day, the most probable outcome of email marketing is that you can expect high readership - but not necessarily monetary gains or conversions. This is because there are 2 kinds of people reading your emails, them being:

  1. Those who want to keep up with how your business is advancing and what new products or services you are offering, or people who are simply receiving emails and reading them without making any active conversions or purchases - in other words, the wrong target audience.
  2. Those who make monetary investments and have signed up to receive emails from you for the sole purpose of making conversions and purchases.

The first kind of people are called “lurkers,” who bring no revenue to your company. Is this to say that you should exclude lurkers from your email marketing campaign entirely?

Not at all. There’s always a chance - however small - that one of them might finally make a conversion.

What you really need is a transformational email marketing strategy: one that is combined with other marketing techniques and tools. Combining email marketing with SEO strategies and social media marketing is one of the surest ways of ensuring that you’re getting everything right: organic traffic, engagement, conversions, and sales. It’s time, as Forbes puts it, to rethink your email marketing plan. Modern email marketing is a major part of small business SEO these days.

Combining Email Marketing with Social Media Marketing

It goes without saying that email marketing is not dying anytime soon. It might not rope in immediate results, but email marketing is essential if you want to keep your loyal list of customers coming back to you. Customer retention, therefore, is something you can achieve through email marketing.

In addition to your conventional email marketing campaigns, you should be running an aggressive social media marketing campaign on the side. Creating pages on social media outlets is only the first step - there are more. The end goals are mostly:

Your social persona and engagement become a major part of your brand reputation. How you behave on social media, what you say, whether or not you respond to customer queries and concerns, whether or not you engage with your audiences - all of this affects your repute as a small business.

For small businesses, building a digital presence and an acceptable reputation is important in terms of attracting more people to your venture. It goes a long way in helping you grow your business, especially since it can convince your visitors to make conversions.

How Do You Enclose Email and Social Media Marketing within the SEO Strategy for Small Businesses?

Your SEO strategy as a small business is doubtless, going to be multifold. Depending on whether or not you are also investing in link building and PPC campaigns, the amount of traffic you get on your website may vary. Incorporating social media marketing and email marketing into the equation, additionally, can rope in greater results.

We have mentioned somewhere above that small business need a transformational campaign in order to make their business run. This starts with performing an SEO audit to determine what areas you lack in - where you need improving. Once you have identified these departments, you’ll probably be hiring professional SEO services to help bring you to the top of Google ranks, and so on.

The transformational campaign should also go back to your mailing list and social media clout: you need to separate the lurkers from the genuine monetary investors. Don’t ignore the lurkers altogether - but do start working towards more personalized campaigns targeted at the right audience. Remember that it’s the repeat customers who not only bring sure revenue but can also help introduce your business to friends and family. Showing them that you care - via emails or social media engagement - is a plus that will go a long way in strengthening your SEO strategy.

Moreover, publishing authoritative content on social media, optimized with the right keywords at the right places, is also a major part of SEO strategies. For small businesses, in particular, content (both text and video) can accede to you the authoritative voice you need in order to establish yourself as an industry leader.

To make your potential patients aware that you exist and ready to serve them, you need an online presence. A business website is mandatory not only for family therapists but for any business under the sun and can be a powerful platform to communicate with clients but you need to attract them to your portal first using some deft and smart digital marketing strategies.

A more convenient and effective way of reaching your audience is to establish a powerful presence on social media channels where you are sure to find audiences relevant to your therapy services business.

Why Family Therapists Must Have a Cautious Approach

While for most businesses, a social media presence is a no-brainer, for a private therapy practice, it is not all that easy as there are ethical predicaments involved. Yet, with a large percentage of the population using social media channels, you simply cannot let go of this medium that offers incredible engagement opportunities.

It is apparent that family therapists and counselors must have a different, cautious, and measured approach while attempting social media marketing. There are a few critical business etiquettes that therapists must follow when they market their practice online on social media channels.

Create Social Media Content That Follows Ethical Guidelines

Many leading digital marketing experts are of the opinion that therapists should embrace social media as they can inspire and help those in need of support with their carefully crafted and meaningful content. Therapists can use the social media platform to list out their areas of specialization in personal relationship issues treatment.

The social media channels can also be used to educate and guide people on some common family issues that are generally faced by many households. They can be educated on identifying the signs of lack of respect in a relationship or to look for tell-tale signs of infidelity and so on.

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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are some of the most popular social media channels today. You can get started on social media marketing by having accounts on these popular platforms to boost the chances of meeting and interacting with your target audience. While doing so, keep the following things in mind:

Here are a few guidelines that therapists and counselors can follow to make the best and right use of social media for their services:

Make sure that you don’t send out requests to your clients to follow your social media accounts. Your clients may feel uncomfortable doing so as their friends on the same platform might deduce that they are seeing a therapist.

A recent study from TechnologyAdvice reveals that around 52 percent of the adult population has one or more than one social media accounts. Social media is getting a lot of engagement from people of all age groups, and if you have not yet leveraged the power to grow your business, then you are lagging behind 2-3 years.

But then still all is not lost. You can easily use the enormous power of social media using a simple social media marketing software that has all the essential features and, plus fits your budget. Here is a list of features that you should be looking for in your social media tool.

1. Centralized Analytics

Once you get started with the marketing campaigns, it is essential to keep track of insights gained from that. As your campaigns reach more users and collect more shares, you need to monitor all those. Metrics such as comments, likes, shares, retweets, and other such things need to be tracked and collected so that you can make decisions based on the changing trends.

Major platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have built-in analytics panel. The panel tracks all your posts on the platforms and provides you with valuable data that you can use to improve your future marketing campaigns.

2. Scheduling

Your company may have multiple social media accounts, and it takes a lot of your valuable time to post on each platform separately. Instead, the social media marketing tool provides you with a feature that displays on all your different profiles at once. So the tool does all your repetitive and mundane tasks for you. In addition to auto-scheduling, tools like Buffer also allows you to add tags to your posts to provide context to the conversations. You can experiment with various time schedules to see which one suits best for your audience.

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3. Engagement

Social media is a big engagement platform. In order to build a trustworthy and loyal customer base, just posting is not enough; you also need to reply to comments and address the user’s queries.

Most social media tools today offer you to streamline everything for easier management. You can see the likes, share, comments and all for your Facebook account, and also the retweets and mentions on your Twitter account. And in case if you have some new ideas about a product you can reach your audience and ask for their feedback.

4. Seamless Collaboration

Every social media tool should have a centralized dashboard that offers secure collaboration. In an organization, every team member should have a streamlined process to report back their assigned tasks. A great feature such as live activity tracker allows you to see when a fellow team member is responding to your message in real-time.

This feature proves to be very valuable when you are working with your colleagues from different departments. Having a centralized place to report to and communicate with other team members provides a transparent working environment.

5. Smart Reporting

Your social media marketing software must be equipped with an automated reporting tool that can save you time. There are a lot of options available out there that provide you with tailor-made templates that you can customize and use as per your requirement. You just need to set it up once and forget it until you need a new template next time. It makes it easy to work on multiple reports that highlight different aspects if you have built-in templates available in your social media marketing software.

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6. Location Search Services

Geo-targeting of your social media posts is essential for business. Your social media marketing software should be able to help you determine the following things:

Most of the marketing tools available today have the ability to sort profiles, posts, and messages based on the location. You can also find other profiles that are present in your region and engage with them directly. To build new relationships, it is better to start with nearby profiles, so that will give them a sense of trust, and you can get a new loyal customer.

7. Security

When you are working with multiple people across different social media accounts, it is better to make sure that they all have appropriate permissions. Every team member must be provided with a unique ID so that when anyone posts any unapproved post, then they can be held accountable for that.

Security features must be up to the point so that you can protect yourself from any suspicious activity happening on their social media platforms.

There’s no question that social media is taking over marketing for almost every industry imaginable. It has exploded over the past several years and companies without a social media marketing platform are suffering - that’s how important social media has become. In fact, influencer marketing grew by one billion dollars from 2017 to 2019, and many new companies have appeared offering a range of services that meet the demands of influencer marketing.  It’s now estimated to be an $8 billion business.

It’s not simply a case of posting to social media, as many companies are finding. It’s finding the right influencers to post for you in order to reach larger audiences and provide credibility that most new social media users simply don’t have. Let’s look at some unique ways to find social media influencers for your industry niche - and find them in minutes!

What is a Social Media Influencer?

So what exactly is a social media influencer? It’s a person who uses social media and has established great credibility in a specific industry. They have access to large audiences and have the ability to persuade others due to their enormous reach, their resources and their authenticity.

They use their social media platform to promote products and services of various brands. The influencer is able to impact an individual’s purchasing habits due to his or her authority or their relationship with target customers. The goal of most companies is to find an expert who has an online social media following and can promote their products and services.

There are many different kinds of influencers, including well-known celebrities like politicians and artists, “macro-influencers” who have less than 1 million followers, “micro-influencers” who have a minimum of 500 followers and others.

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Social Media Cybersecurity Issues

Influencers can drive customers using social media, but there are some cybersecurity issues companies need to be aware of. Internet hacking is one problem, and data can be breached on the influencer’s followers. Data like names, phone numbers, email addresses and birthdates have all been hacked, along with unsecured passwords.

Another, larger problem is fake influencers who can evade being detected. Instagram, for example, has a problem with people buying fake followers, so influencer vetting is one of the most important things to do before delving into any influencer marketing campaign.

One way to vet a supposed influencer is through online tools like Nuwber, where you can reveal the true identity of a person who claims to be a legitimate influencer. Using phone numbers and other data, you’ll be able to find their real name and information, which may or may not be who they claim to be.

Another way a company can protect itself from fake influencers is to use an influencer marketing agency. They generally have data security policies in place that can weed out fake influencers, and have the experience needed to find authentic influencers. They also adhere and comply with FTC regulations and run FTC compliant campaigns.

Several top influencer marketing agencies include Viral Nation, Go Fish Digital, Obviously, SugarFree and others.

There are other issues and dangers with using influencers. For example, there are inauthentic partnerships. The influencer claims they have a solid relationship with their audience, but the reality is they don’t. There are also ethical conflicts, when the influencer is paid to represent your brand and they end up doing things you don’t want reflected on your company. If that happens, you’ll end up with an influencer induced ethical problem.

If an influencer is involved in scandals or other issues, it can hurt the company he or she is working for. Think about Tiger Woods, who was an influencer for Nike, Tag Heuer and others. He was accused by many of infidelity, which put a bad light on the companies he represented. It was estimated that the investors who used Woods in advertising lost $12 billion as stock prices dropped, and additional millions in social media accounts as followers dried up.

Fake followers are another problem companies have to deal with. There are websites that offer “follower packages” or “genuine likes” to help influencers appear more popular than they really are. They use inactive accounts or bots on a person’s follower list, but it skews the numbers and they’re phony.

Finally, problems crop up when influencers change. After all, influencers are human, and they can wake up one morning and decide they don’t want to represent your brand any more. Or their lifestyle changes and it’s inconsistent with a company's product or service, and when their followers find out it will hurt your social media campaigns.

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Working with Agencies vs. Software

For many companies and brands, the choice is either to work with an influencer marketing agency or use influencer marketing platforms, which is software. But there are significant differences between the two.

If you’re not familiar with influencer marketing platforms, they’re designed to provide influencer discovery tools for brands, and some are able to offer searchable databases of potential influencers by using algorithms. Some of the more notable platforms include Famebit, BuzzStream, Heepsy and others.

One of the problems with influencer platforms is that they offer a limited selection. They can help companies find micro-influencers, who work hard to monetize their social media followers, but celebrity influencers and macro influencers are much harder to find using those platforms.

The top influencer marketing agencies have access to many of the world’s top social media influencers, which is something you won’t find with software. The agencies also have experience vetting and selecting influencers who are appropriate for a brand’s particular image and marketing strategies.

Another advantage of having an influencer marketing agency is that they can develop a creative strategy for a company. With software, the company has to generate the creative strategy before anything can be accomplished. With an influencer marketing agency, you can grow and refine your marketing campaign over time. The other advantage to having an influencer marketing agency is that they can save you a lot of time and money searching for the top influencers. You’ll be able to draw upon the agency’s knowledge and experience in finding the right influencer, and using him or her in the best ways.

Social media influencers can be a great advantage in promoting a company’s product or service. Using influencer agencies is the fastest way to find the right influencer for most companies.

We’re all looking for the best social media advice to improve our social media performance, whether we’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned veteran running multiple accounts.

The problem is, I see the same pieces of advice circulating on a consistent basis. These fragments of strategic insight are somewhat valuable on the surface, especially if you’re a newcomer discovering the ins and outs of the strategy, but overall, they’re not as valuable or as accurate as they seem.

I’ve selected seven such pieces of advice I’ve found while perusing various advice articles, and while some of them to have a point, or work in certain circumstances, they aren’t universally true:

1. Create great content, and followers will flock to you

This is the “if you build it, they will come” advice. The idea here is that as long as you’re creating and distributing high-quality content, eventually, you’ll naturally attract a large following. This idea is flawed for a handful of reasons; first, just because your content is “good” doesn’t mean there’s a market for it. Your content also needs to be relevant.

Second, your initial distribution of content is going to be seen only by a handful of people; it takes extra syndication and exposure to build an initial group of loyal followers. Besides, having more followers is nice, but it isn’t everything-in many cases, a handful of relevant, interested followers is more valuable than a lot of apathetic ones.

2. Use more platforms to get more exposure

The common advice for newcomers to the social media marketing world is to claim a presence on every conceivable social media platform, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr, among others.

Because each platform reaches a different cross-section of the population, signing up for all of them and posting regularly should allow you to reach more people. This is true, to an extent, but more isn’t necessarily better. Each platform is going to demand time, money, and resources, so you might be better off narrowing your focus to the platforms most relevant to your brand.

3. Load your posts with hashtags to get more visibility

 Hashtags have had an interesting evolution in the social media world. Originally introduced as a way to make posts more easily searchable, they quickly became a way for people to draw more attention to their posts or, in some cases, to organize people around a movement or trend.

Unfortunately, many brands have taken hashtags to be a kind of “get visibility quick” scheme; in reality, stuffing your posts with too many hashtags, especially ones you aren’t familiar with, can make you appear spammy and turn your target audience away.

4. Post frequently to see better results

This advice should be considered, but not followed literally. It’s important to post often on your profiles, or else people won’t be able to see your content, but don’t confuse that for posting “as often as possible.”

If you post more than once or twice a day on any platform (aside from Twitter, which can tolerate many tweets a day), most of your posts will be filtered out by newsfeed algorithms - and even if they weren’t, the overabundance of content could turn even your most loyal followers away.

Stick to a 1-post-a-day schedule, at least to start. You can always scale up your efforts if and when you find increased demand for them. 

5. Just be yourself

If you’re working with a personal brand, you’ve probably heard the advice to just be yourself. And I’ll admit, staying true to your own personality, for the most part, adds a layer of authenticity to your brand - which is important in today’s crisis of consumer trust.

However, there’s no guarantee that your target market will like or appreciate your personality; if you want to get results with a specific demographic, you’ll need to tailor your tone, content, and approach to fit that demographic. Sometimes, that means tweaking elements of your character. 

6. Post as consistently as possible

People do, to some extent, crave predictability. That’s why you’ll often see social media marketing experts recommending that you make posts around the same time every day, and posting in similar patterns throughout the week.

This way, people can learn what to expect from your brand and when to expect it. However, if you post according to a particular schedule too often, people may become tired of the pattern - especially if you’re using an automation tool that posts religiously at the same time each day.

It’s a sign that you aren’t posting naturally, or that you aren’t putting much thought into what you distribute.

7. Let your whole team post on social media

Social media marketing is a cost-effective strategy, but it’s still demanding in terms of time. If you could distribute the responsibilities among your teammates, it might be easier to manage - especially if they all have something different and interesting to add to the conversation.

Unfortunately, giving many people access to the sole company social media page can have negative consequences. It increases the chances for tonal inconsistencies between posts - and that’s not even considering the possibility of malicious use.

Moving forward, take every article you read on social media advice with a grain of salt. Each marketer is going to draw from a different selection of experiences, and not all writers have first-hand experience managing campaigns.

Accordingly, it’s best to read from a wide variety of sources, experiment with your own strategies, and ultimately come to your own conclusions. After all, the best way to learn is by doing.

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