Top 10 Ways to Drive Social Media Traffic to Your Website

The centre of your online marketing strategy should be your website so that you can add potential customers to your marketing funnel and eventually to become buyers.  This means that social media shouldn’t to be the destination for your followers. Instead it should only be the beginning of a long relationship that involves sharing, interacting, learning and engaging.

We suggest you use social media

• to remind followers to visit your website for more information, products and services
• as a way to listen to what your audience wants
• as the method by which you become an important industry expert from whom your audience seeks information.

The following tips are used by industry experts, large organisations and businesses alike to drive social media traffic to their websites. No need to reinvent the wheel, these ten tips work!

1. Become a Thought Leader

It may seem strange that the more popular you can become off the Internet, the more popular you will be on the Internet and the more people will connect with you, follow you and then go to your website. Spread yourself around, write for other popular blogs, magazines and newsletters and then cross promote. Accept speaking engagements outside the Internet but record them and put them on YouTube.com, embed the recordings or links on your site and share them via social media. Write a book and use that as your calling card.

2. Create an Interactive Community

People love to talk to each other about issues that affect them. If you really want to offer a huge benefit to your customers and potential customers, form a community around them. Create a message board that is interactive and generates a lot of visitor activity and participation. Promote the board, which will promote your website – thus garnering not only more social media traffic the first time you promote the forum but, if it’s active, people will also come back again and again. Facebook Groups are also a great place to create a community.

Message boards, forums and Facebook Groups are great places to create an interactive community

CLICK TO TWEET

 3. Don’t Forget SEO

Search engine optimisation is a very important component in any online marketing strategy. Optimise for social media by including the right keywords, the right metadata, information about images, content and more, so that you can be found. Plugins like SEO by Yoast or All in One SEO are incredibly useful tools. Remember to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO for best results.

 4. Engage on Social Media

You can’t just open a social media account, fill out a profile, start blasting updates and expect any results. Well, at least not the results you want! You need to start with a plan, understand your goals, choose your tactics and then seek to engage with others on social media.  This way you ensure your plans happen and your goals are met.

 5. Listen to the Buzz

A really great way to use social media is to use it to listen to the buzz around your business. But don’t just listen. When you find something about your industry or product in general, or your business in particular, ensure that you respond with the right answers, links and information so that you can get your message out to participants. If you don’t find any buzz, create it. Make your own groups, start your own discussions and share, share, share.

 6.  Track, Measure & Adjust

Find out which types of content get more shares, more comments and more action. Know what your customers want to read. Ask them what they need to know. The more you can track the success of your campaigns the more you can improve. You can actually adjust and improve any campaign while it’s in progress if you have the right information.

 7.  Use Strategic Paid Advertisements

Paid advertisements can be very expensive if you aren’t sure why you’re doing them. When it comes to social media, run an advertisement to get more sign ups for your newsletter or more likes on your Facebook Page. Then market your products and services to them that way, rather than using the ads as a way to market your product directly. While at first you may not notice much of a change in traffic, you will over time because you’ll have them in your marketing funnel.

8.  Use Different Forms of Content on Social Media

Mix up what type of content you share and add to your social media updates. Use newsworthy content, evergreen content and content in different forms like video, infographics, and text. You want to write a blurb before each share in order to pique the reader’s attention and share high-quality, relevant content on a regular basis.

 9.  Work with Influencers

There are always going to be “rock stars” in every industry who are well known and who can highly influence your audience. Research who these people are, connect with them and find ways to engage with them that helps you leverage their audience to spread your message. If you can get an influencer to recommend your products and/or services to others, your traffic will explode.

10.   Present Content with Strong CTAs

Never send out any content on social media without a call to action (“CTA”). Your CTA must be varied, and to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. If you want your audience to share your infographic, ask them to. If you want your audience to “like” your post, ask them to. If you want your audience to click through to read the rest of something on a website, ask them to. Finally, if you want them to buy something, ask them to buy it. Tell them the benefits of doing so and ask them to do it.

It’s clear that social media can be an important avenue to gain more traffic to your website or blog. But, it’s not going to happen automatically. You are going to have to work a little bit more to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, these tried and true tips really do work. By using them you will drive social media traffic to your website. Not only that, if you’re clear on your message you’ll drive targeted traffic that is ready to answer your calls to action.

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7 Reasons Why You Need to Go Mobile [INFOGRAPHIC]

Unbelievably there are still some people out there who think mobile is a fad and are still not using it to market their business.

The benefits for mobile are huge and it’s potential is even bigger!

There are many reasons why mobile is taking the world by storm but here are just 7 that should convince you if you are not already convinced.

1. We won’t leave home without it

The mobile is now is part of the family and goes wherever we go. No other marketing channel has this constant contact with it’s customers, all the trusty text message needs is a handset and some phone signal - job done.

2. Your message will get read

With other marketing channels it is hard to make sure that your marketing message will get heard or read, well with a text message you can almost guarantee it.

3. Mobile is more personal

With the huge array of companies out there competition is tough and the choice is hard for customers. Most consumers now are looking for the best service to differentiate between companies and having a company that gives such a personal service via text message is what people want to make them feel special.

4. It’s how people want to communicate 

People are addicted to their mobiles and they want to communicate via them.  

89% of us suffer from PPV syndrome or Phantom Pocket Vibration Syndrome, which is the believe that your phone vibrated when it didn’t. This stems from our want to be contacted on our mobile. 

5. It’s cost effective

The costs are small and the potential is huge. The engagement rates are 6 to 8 times higher than email.

6. It’s how they will be contacting you

The magnificent little mobile device can now do everything from ring, text, email and surf the web. Search Engine Land discovered that 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action.

7. Mobile is only going one way - up

While all other media consumption is on the way down mobile is the only one on the way up. (eMarketer)

TV    2009 - 45%     2012 - 38%

Online  2009 - 25%  2013 - 20%

Radio   2009 - 17%  2012 - 12%

Print   2009 - 9%     2013 - 4%

Mobile   2009 - 4%   2013 - 20%  

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The Language of Engagement

Having a well crafted community strategy and roadmap is critical to enabling effective outcomes, but translating that strategy into your engagement approach is equally critical and often overlooked. People tend to communicate in online communities they way they do elsewhere and that can often be the wrong approach.

What’s the problem?

In most business communications the emphasis is on being declarative and crafting a well thought-out and complete thought. Whether that is an email, a presentation or a press release, we try not to leave things unsaid or vague. But the enemy of engagement is perfection. The more complete your thought, the less other opinions and input is needed. Complete and perfect communications are a transaction, not a conversation. However, this is what is expected in traditional business communication and it creates a major barrier to collaboration.

When you communicate in a community, everything you thought you knew about communication is often wrong. The people who tend to get the most engagement use a writing style that is modest, imperfect, inquisitive, solicitous and often vulnerable. This approach tends to make people with a business or management background squeamish. The other challenge community managers have is that these attributes can, when used the wrong way, lead to a passive tone. This is also not good because the organization’s perspective and voice is lost and the community could move in a direction that is no longer productive to the business.

If this sounds a bit like a catch-22, it’s because it is. One of the skills of a great community manager is riding the fine line between being solicitous in general interactions and firm when it comes to the community boundary conditions.

Here are some of our recommendations on how to shape your language of engagement:

• Be careful about using absolutes – always, never, no, yes.
• When expressing an opinion (which I think is important because differences are where innovation and change come from), use phrases like ‘In my experience’, ‘I have found’, ‘I think’ and ‘From my perspective’, which allow an opening for others and encourages others to share their experience and perspectives.
• Use ‘but’ and ‘should’ sparingly. ‘But’ arrests a conversation and takes it in a different direction, implicitly judging another comment as incomplete or misdirected. ‘Should’ is often used when telling someone else what you think they ought to do, which is a dynamic of control vs. engagement.
• Use ‘you’ and ‘we’ carefully for similar reasons – they can subtly indicate control over ideas and people.
• Be curious and ask a lot of questions, even if you think someone’s question has been answered. There is often more to the story that leads to better understanding and sometimes, a different answer.
• Consider using emoticons – not necessarily all over and not 10 in a row – because online it is hard to decipher when a comment is meant in a friendly or a confrontational way, and emoticons help establish tone. The same goes for exclamation points.
• Be aware of digital body language - both your own and others. Pam Moore has a great list of ways you can indicate or decipher intent.
• Be careful about validating or spreading either a good or bad rumor before it can be confirmed. This can get you into trouble very quickly and it is a human instinct to want to solve problems and spread good news, so it’s particularly important to be aware that as a community manager you are an authority figure that adds fuel to a fire. Use that power carefully.

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12 Critical Homepage Elements

The homepage is the most important page on your website because this is where potential customers are most likely to visit first. The bulk of your traffic will come from your homepage and to make sure you are not hindering any visits turning into conversions, there are 12 critical elements you should have on your website homepage.

1. Headline

Your headline is the first thing people will see when they go to a website so it’s important that you have a clear and concise headline so your readers know exactly what to expect from you as a business.

2. Sub-Headline

Your sub-headline should offer your views a brief breakdown in a few sentences what they will get from your business. This is where you begin to show your value but remember to keep it short and stay away from telling a long story.

3. Benefits

If you can describe what your business does, that’s great however, you also need to know why your business fulfils a customers need. What makes you different and why will people benefit from buying what you have to offer?

4. Primary Calls-to-Action

To see an increase in sales, you need to have at least three primary calls-to-action above the fold of your homepage. Don’t have the same kinds of calls to actions, make sure each is unique.

5. Features

It’s all well and good having benefits on the homepage but without your customers knowing exactly what your key features are around your business, they won’t trust you. Have a list of features to give viewers a better understanding around your products and services.

6. Customer Proof

Including quotes or recommendations from customers is a great way to build your profile and give users some confidence in your business and what you are selling. Having this on your homepage will give you that extra push when it comes to a customer making a purchasing decision.

7. Success Indicators

If your business has been recognised for outstanding contributions or has won awards, make sure this is featured on your homepage. Having success indicators is just as important as having customer reviews.

8. Navigation

Bounce rates are a huge problem for websites which have poor navigation. Make sure you are offering your potential customers the best user experience possible by making sure your website navigation is as smooth as possible.

9. Supporting Image

Most people will respond to imagery more than text so its important you have a relevant and engaging supporting picture or video on your homepage to compliment your written content.

10. Content Offer

Offering an eBook, Whitepaper or Guide completely free of charge to those who want to give you their email address is a great way to bring people back to your website and to also market to in the future.

11. Resources

It’s been reported that 96% of people visiting your website aren’t actually ready to purchase from you so you, as a business need to think of other ways to bring potential customers back to your site so that when they are ready to purchase, they choose you. A good way to do this is to have a resources section where they can increase their knowledge.

12. Secondary Calls-to-Action

It is important that you have a secondary call-to-action at the bottom of your website homepage to make sure that you are covering all basis when trying to acquire a customer.

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5 Things Fishing Can Teach You About Social Media

1. Know Your Target

When fishing it’s important to know what species of fish you are going after. This not only helps in lure and bait selection but for narrowing down where you will be fishing as well. Knowing the type of fish you are targeting and what they eat can help increase your odds of catching something.

The same can be said in social media. Where is your audience located and what do they expect from you? Creating an ideal customer list can help you understand who your audience is and this can help you determine what they want and expect from you in terms of content.

2. Know Your Habitat

When fishing it’s good to scout out location. Looking for places fish may hide for cover, deep holes where the big fish may be and for any obstacles your lure and boat could potentially get caught up in.

With social media you are need to understand the location you are “fishing” in as well. Are you on Twitter? You should be aware that you only have 140 characters to work with. On Google+? Conversations, big images and longer form posts can be successful. Pinterest? Big long images tend to get noticed easier. Instagram?  All images must be square and hashtags are important. The point is  toknow where you are and know the rules to increase your chances of connecting with your audience.

3. Be Willing To Change It Up

Sometimes you will find that even on the most perfect day in the most perfect conditions the fish just aren’t biting. Nothing is happening. Every lure and bait combination you try does nothing for you. Until you do something unexpected or a little different. Maybe throwing a top water bait or reeling faster or slower just to change up your presentation. Or maybe you target a new species.

The point is if your tactics aren’t supporting your strategy you have to be willing to make the best of the situation and maybe switch things up a bit. Have you only been posting link updates? Maybe try an image or a text update. Try including an image in your next tweet or using Twitter Cards. Try a longer post on Google+ with an image if you’ve only been sharing smaller link shares. Or try posting more or less or at different times than usual. You won’t know what works until you try it out.

4. It’s Called Fishing For A Reason

If you caught something every time you went to the lake it would be called catching and not fishing.

Not every post you create, not every image and not every video or podcast you pour your time and energy into is going to go viral. It might not see thousands of shares or receive thousands of comments, it might not even see one. You know what? That is OK. Each time you publish a new piece of content it’s a chance to learn, to grow and to experiment. Keep on creating content your audience wants and keep thinking in the long term because that is what will help your business and your brand find the success you are after.

5. Chucking One Lure Won’t Catch A Fish (Probably)

When out fishing chances are you don’t call it a day after only casting once. And chances are one cast won’t catch a fish. While I have been lucky enough to catch a fish off my first cast, it’s rare and doesn’t happen often. I also didn’t catch one and pack it in for the day.

In social media chances are you aren’t going to publish one blog post, one podcast, create one infographic or image and hit everything so perfect that it takes off and makes you internet famous. Again it’s happened but it’s rare. Instead you need to get into the trenches daily. You need to create, publish and share great content on a regular and consistent basis. Engage with your audience, engage with others in your industry and keep moving forward. Even if you do catch that “fish” on the first try it’s not time to give up. It’s time to dig deeper and keep working to create and build your audience, grow your brand and build awareness of what you do and what makes you special.

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6 SMS Marketing Ideas For Small Business

Here are 6 quick SMS marketing ideas for your business:

1. Send out a weekly text message tip.

This is my personal favorite. A simple weekly "text tip" keeps you in front of your prospects while providing value and paving the way for other types of text messaging.

2. Send out flash texts about unpublished sales.

Want to build exclusivity into your marketing? Flash sales announced only via text message are a great way to make your customers feel special and build excitement around your text message marketing.

3. Send out text reminders for appointments.

If you're a doctor, dentist, lawyer, consultant, or anyone who makes appointments (and relies upon people showing up to those appointments) text message reminders are an excellent way to increase your appointment conversion rates.

4. Send out order confirmation or update text messages.

Anytime your customers place an order or complete a new purchase, you can send a text message confirming the purchase and/or updating the customer on the order status.

5. Send out custom text message conversations.

In addition to some of these ideas above, you can also try out text message conversations at live events to capture specific data from new or existing prospects.

6. Send out texts that connect to your email marketing.

The reason text message SMS marketing is so effective is something like 90% of people keep their phone with them at all times. Sending out an important email soon? Send out a text message teaser to increase your email open rates.

These are just some quick ideas to get you thinking about how SMS marketing can work in your business. Many small business owners I talk to are still hesitant to put text message marketing to work for them because they find it intrusive. The truth is, today's consumer is becoming more welcoming of text message marketing all the time.

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How To Convert Visitors to Customers With Your Web Copywriting

Do you have a lot of visitors to your site? Do you do a happy dance every time the number increases or you see someone from a faraway country stop in?

It is really exciting to see all of those numbers and all of those people, but eventually it becomes exhausting and overwhelming when those visitors leave and never become customers. Turning them into customers is important and now is the time to do just that; but how does one go about that? This blog is going to discuss five ways to use web copywriting to convert visitors into paying customers.

How Web Copywriting Helps Convert

1. Get the Blog Going. We say this time and time again, but it is crucial when you are trying to convert visitors into customers. “How does blogging do this?” Blogging gives you the opportunity to become an authority in your field with Google, helping you rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP). The higher you rank, the more visitors will come. Once the visitors get to your site, they’ll begin reading through your posts and deciding whether or not your company is worth their hard-earned money.

If the visitors like what they see, they could just add you to their RSS feeds and keep up with your blog. This is where hyperlinks become important in your blog. If you add them throughout your blog posts, you have a higher likelihood of getting visitors to other parts of your site and to your products.

Did you mention a service or product similar to yours such as dog grooming and gourmet food? Hyperlink those terms to your specific service or product, showing readers you do exactly what they are reading about. This will help convert those casual readers into consumers quickly. Never underestimate the power of the written word, especially on the Internet!

2. Publish Yourself. Getting your content published in various formats around the web will also help convert visitors to customers. You can publish Whitepapers, which can give potential clients detailed information about your company or you can publish press releases to make people aware you exist. These are great ways to create interest in your product all while giving potential clients the information they all want. These forms of web copywriting can help act as an FAQ of sorts.

3. Email Is Not Dead Yet. An important part of web copywriting is email. Many seem to think email marketing is going away, but that is simply not the case. We all check our email first thing in the morning and the last thing before we go to bed. We are all hopelessly addicted to the Internet and email, which gives you a perfect opportunity to market your company. Encourage visitors to sign up for your newsletter when they stop by to read your blog. You’ll be surprised at the amount of people who will sign up if given the choice. Don’t force people to because this tends to scare people off. Give them a choice and then send out weekly or bi-weekly emails about services or new blog posts to keep interest alive in readers.

4. Research Your Audience and Keep Researching. Research is the name of the game when it comes to converting visitors into customers. The more you research, the more likely you will hit the target perfectly. Business2Community says that by providing information regarding your services and industry, visitors will already know if you meet their needs. This gives potential clients enough information about your products and shows that you are worthwhile.

Another excellent way to research your visitors and industry is to formulate case studies. A case study will tell an interesting story filled with facts about your current clientele and success rate, which will encourage those reading it that you are a company that is trustworthy. A case study will help you beat your competition and can also help you see any changes that need to be made for your company.

5. Landing Pages Are Crucial To Creating Customers. A crucial way to use web copywriting to convert visitors to customers is having an incredible landing page. Landing pages are great for taking visitors to the location you want, instead of them going to the overwhelming front page. You may think that customers want to see that front page, but the reality is most people find the main site to be confusing no matter how organized it is. Do you have a specific product you wish to sell to your visitors? Send them to that landing page. This is a great way to generate leads for your company.

Let’s take a quick look at a few handy tips for your landing page:

• Make sure it is simple and only has the basic information you want your visitors to see. Don’t overwhelm them with tons of images and other information about your services; stick to a specific product. This will cut down on any confusion your visitors may have, helping to make them into paying customers.
• Make sure people can navigate around your site easily. The harder it is, the less likely visitors will want to pay you for any service or product.
• As with all web copywriting make sure you are friendly with visitors. If you site is hyper professional, this will come across as snooty and arrogant. However, if you are friendly or down-to-earth, this will come across as someone people will want to work with in the future.

In Closing

Converting visitors into customers isn’t very difficult if you follow the above steps. The more you cater to your visitors, the more they will realize your company is a great one to work with. Don’t be too upset if this doesn’t happen over night. Sometimes it takes a little while for visitors to realize that they want to purchase items from you, but soon you will start watching your customer base grow to meet your website’s visitor rates and that will be a good day, indeed.

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The Increasing Facebook Conundrum

To Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question.

It's a serious question that any business, marketer etc needs to consider - is Facebook worth our time? Facebook used to be a place where with the right approach, brands etc could make a decent impact without parting with any actual cash. A reasonable amount of people would see your update in their newsfeed - it was nice. Whether that actually achieved anything for the business is another question, and frankly one that the vast majority would struggle to answer, but you at least knew that people would be given the opportunity to see your post.

I've got 9% problems...

Rumours started to circulate last year about average organic reach falling to an average of 9% (organic reach is the percentage of your total fans that have your update served to their newsfeed). You could class that as a kick in the teeth. Why did this happened? Well, Facebook will tell you they're trying to improve the quality of your newsfeed, while others will speculate it's all about the benjamins - they want you to pay to 'boost your posts' in order to increase that reach. Zuck needs more flip-flops.

9% was a blessing

How does 1.5% sound to you? Pretty bad right? Well, in March, Page owners started reporting average reaches of 1.5-2%. We then had the much-publicised Eat24 withdrawal from Facebook, which really brought the issue to the attention of marketers. Since then, there's been a constant debate questioning the sense in even being present on Facebook without having some budget to pile into post boosting and further advertising.

The end is nigh...

Or is it? Well, Clarion Comms carried out some interesting research in April. They tracked three Pages over three months to see if the reported drop was a reality, granted, three Pages isn't exactly an all-encompassing study, but at least it gives us something to consider.  Here are the results...

What does this show? Well, two of the brands (it would be nice to at least know what realm these brands are in) are surpassing the 2% by a large margin, while 'brand 2' is sitting in between that 2-9% scale. Note that brands 1 & 2 have spent money on advertising, but not promoted posts. I'd wager that their higher reach is a natural product of the fact that their ads are taking their Page to a wider audience, which really should cause an increase in organic actions, which makes me think that's isn't a particularly valid metric. A handy bit of data, but far from conclusive.

What about my experience?

At Velocity, we manage a number of Facebook Pages. One of the Pages we were handling (a short-term project) was for a very popular brand in the B2C realm, the updates on the Page used to have a great organic reach (an average of 48% and strong 'engagement'). The project ended in March this year and I worked out the average reach of the last ten posts we published on their behalf. The average organic reach amounted to 0.3%. Ouch. We hadn't changed tact as things had been working very well, this drop was very, very sudden, almost overnight. That 0.3% renders organic activity as useless in this case.

So, is it time to abandon Facebook?

The data is inconclusive. If you look at this chart (via Adage), you'll see that while reach is down, engagement is up...

Again, this data isn't exactly comprehensive in terms of the number of Pages assessed, but it does give some hope that while brands perhaps aren't reaching as many people, they are creating more 'engagement'.

Ok Mike, what should we do?

First things first, make sure you are as aware as physically possible as to what your Facebook activity is achieving for your business, client etc. If you don't have a clear picture of that, you can't even begin to consider the sanity of my next piece of advice for you. De-prioritise Facebook Does that sound crazy? It isn't. If you used to have actual success via Facebook on an organic level, and that's no longer the case, then you have to consider its importance in your marketing mix. That sounds rather obvious, but often businesses (and their suppliers) will plough on regardless, which is just plain silly. It may be the case that you've placed a lot of emphasis on Facebook and Twitter as part of your social media activity and that's fine, but can you make better use of your time by dropping Facebook down your pecking-order? Perhaps you can reach similar audiences in one of the other plethora of other social media options out there? Don't want to remove Facebook from its pedestal? Then, you need to ask yourself...

Can you up your game?

To increase organic reach, you need to be putting out content on your Facebook that people want to get involved with. Is your content good enough? Can it be improved? Monitor, and I mean really monitor the effect of each update - what is creating the biggest reach and engagement? Are you linking back to your site or content within it? What updates are causing the best traffic and what are those people doing when the arrive on your site? Up your game and focus on the wins.

Can you shell out?

If you have budget available to put towards post boosting and wider Facebook advertising, then you can still achieve solid results with a blend of paid and (quality) organic activity. However, and you'll be sick of hearing this from me, please don't throw money at it without knowing what it is achieving. We are now advising startups or businesses making their first moves into social that to achieve real impact with Facebook, they have to be willing to spend some money. If they can't do that, then a realistic outlook of likely Facebook success is required. It may be the case that maintaining simple presence (and monitoring it) is the best approach, without putting blood, sweat and tears into it.

Concluding thought

All is not lost when it comes to Facebook, but people need to be more clear than ever on what they're trying to achieve with it and be realistic about success and likely growth. Don't be scared about not being on Facebook, its not a prerequisite.

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Creating a Hashtag to Build Engagement at Your Event

You can now find them on every major social network (excluding LinkedIn), and more than likely, your customers or clients are already using them in some way or another.

There really are many ways that you can use hashtags for your business’s social media marketing, but in the interest of time, I’m going to focus solely on using them for your events.

Why should I use a hashtag for my event?

As a business owner, you may be putting on all kinds of events to show your expertise and acquire new clients or customers! It’s time to use hashtags to increase awareness and the visibility of your events.

By including a hashtag in your promotions, commentary, and post-event thank yous, you’re not only pulling a conversation together, but you’re also making it easy for people to find photos and attendee interactions with your event.

How do I choose a hashtag?

Your event hashtag should be:

• Unique: Search Twitter for the hashtag you have in mind. If it has been used recently, you will need to rethink it. If not, have at it!
• Short: Remember, on Twitter you only have 140 characters to use. Because that’s where most of the conversation will be taking place, you need to make sure to keep your hashtag short.
• Related: Your hashtag should reflect your event. Ex: Small Business Week (#SBW2013) or the World Cup (#WorldCup).
• Memorable: You want your attendees to use this hashtag when they are talking about your event. This means that you want them to be able to remember what hashtag is associated with the event, without them having to try and find it every time they want to talk about your event.

How will anyone know about my hashtag?

Similar to any other marketing campaign, if you do not properly promote it no one will know it exists. The same goes for your new hashtag.

Your hashtag should be everywhere! But let’s break it down a little more:

Before your event

1. Build awareness: Your hashtag should be included in all social promotions of your event.
2. Listen: Track your hashtag on social sites so you can thank people who use your hashtag when mentioning that they’ll be attending your event (or better yet, promoting your event for you).
3. Be visible: Make sure to include your event hashtag on your registration page, informing attendees to “Join the Conversation.”

During your event

1. Create conversations: Use a program like tweetbeam.com (that’s my favorite) to project the conversation on a screen. This will entice others to join the conversation during your event.
2. Invite: Have any and all of your speakers announce the hashtag and point out your tweetbeam stream.
3. Join in: Make sure to engage with your attendees who are using the hashtag. Retweet them and ask questions. Just make sure you’re not too invasive. This is not the place for you to advertise your business.

Tip – Don’t think you’ll have time to engage during the event? Schedule a couple tweets around your event content before the event begins.

After your event

1. Write digital thank you cards: You now have a social list of all of your engaged attendees. Take the time to thank them individually for joining you at your event.

   Tip – Make sure to follow all of them and create a list specifically for event attendees so you can remember who they are down the road

2. Keep the conversation going: Continue to follow the hashtag until the conversation dies. You’ll be surprised how much people will continue to talk about a great event. Continue to retweet and mention the pieces of great content your attendees are sharing.
3. Gather multimedia from the event: Searching for your hashtag on individual social networks or using a program like Storify to pull all networks together allows you to view all images and/or videos that were shared (along with all other great content) around your event.

Tip – This content can be used for a new Facebook album or Pinterest Board. 

How do I manage my event hashtag?

Hashtags can be very visible, just like all social promotions. Moderating is the key to a successful hashtag. The last thing you want is someone promoting your event, or worse, asking you a question about your event and no one is there to answer.

Managing events can be hard enough, so make sure you create a plan to also manage your event hashtag.

Tip – Creating a stream specifically for this hashtag on a platform like Hootsuite can really help you keep track of the conversation. 

Does using a hashtag expose my business to spam?

Yes, it can. However, you should pat yourself on the back if this happens. The only time you’ll find spammers using a specific hashtag is if it’s a “trending hashtag.”

A trending hashtag is a hashtag that is being used more than they were previously. The trending list is on Twitter to help people find “breaking news” from across the world in real-time.

So if you’ve made the “trending list” and begin to have spammers invade your hashtag, DO NOT PANIC! This means you are wildly successful!

Tip – Post about the fact that there are spammers, so your attendees don’t accidentally click on anything the spammers are sharing. 

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Google Wants The Best User Experience for Mobile Users

Google recently made a move to improve the user experience of mobile search users. Its a move that we have expected from a Digital Marketing view point since last year – we simply didn’t know how the move would be made. So the move means that if your website has a redirect for users and it does not go to the equivelant page of a mobile version (or your site is not responsive) you will see a similar message in search as to the one below.

If you are reading this, it’s likely you are a website owner or SEO with this issue. So what is the solution?

Interigate The Issue

First we need to check that the message you are seeing is “smartphone” related and not some other issue. So nip into Google Webmaster Tools for your website, you should have a message if you are seeing these in search results. If not you can still check go to Crawl > Crawl Errors > Smartphone – if you see anything in “faulty redirect” these are the urls you will need to address with the solutions below.

Fixing The Issue

There are a few ways to fix issues with the redirect message from Google. Here are the top 3 we would advise:

1. Don’t simply redirect all “smart device” users to the homepage or category pages on a mobile site. Try to ensure a one-for-one experience between the two versions of your website. This isn’t always practical though so where this is the case limit the number of “wholesale” redirects you have.
2. Where you can’t redirect users to a similar page on a mobile version of the site, it is advised that you simply “do nothing” and do not redirect them from a desktop site.
3. Try updating the design of your website to use responsive web design, this would mean that a single version of your site would serve both mobile devices and desktop devices gracefully.

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3 Ways to Supercharge Your E-commerce Email Strategy

A person’s email address may be the most valuable piece of info an e-commerce company can know about a customer. It is a method of delivering important info and a means of learning more about a subscriber (e.g. when, where and with what do they open email?). In addition, email also has the highest ROI in comparison with other digital marketing channels, such as social media or content marketing.

Unfortunately, many companies are failing to see the full potential of email because they are only sending unoptimized marketing blasts. While promotional newsletters are a good start, there are many advanced email techniques and triggered message campaigns that e-commerce companies can use to gently nudge subscribers to take a certain action. Next time you’re trying to get customers to join your email list, redeem a coupon, make a purchase or share an invite with their friends, consider using one of these techniques.

1. The Email Receipt Opt-in

It’s confirmed. The internet is now America’s favorite shopping destination, but that doesn’t mean brick-and-mortar stores will be disappearing any time soon. Shopping is transforming into multi-channel activity. People discover (yay Pinterest!) and research products online, then make purchases in-store. The opposite holds true too, with customers checking out how products look, feel and fit in-store and then go online to find the best price--a practice also known as ‘showrooming’.

Retailers with both a brick and mortar and online presence, can use email as a good way to adapt to this type of new shopping. An email receipt can help tie the two experiences together for your customers. Next time, at the in-store point of sale, offer to email the receipt to your customer, rather than to print it. This is not only good for the environment, but also provides a great opportunity to ask if the shopper would like to subscribe to your newsletter for news about ongoing promotions or special events.

2. The Helpful Reminder

Your customers are busy (and sometimes forgetful) people. They may leave items behind in shopping carts or forget to redeem their birthday deal before it expires. Smart marketers can use email as a gentle reminder to nudge customers to make a purchase or to complete another desired action.

A couple examples of helpful reminder shopping emails:

Shopping cart abandonment

Oops, a customer’s shopping experience was interrupted, but that doesn’t mean she’s gone forever. Send an email featuring the items left behind in her cart and include a no-brainer call-to-action checkout button. If the first shopping cart abandonment email doesn’t convince , you can also send a second email with a promotional coupon to nudge her to make the purchase.

Promo expiry

Do your customers know that your semi-annual sale ends in two days? It would be helpful to send a reminder email one day before and then another one a couple hours before the end of the sale to make sure your customers have enough time to shop the sale.

Back in Stock

Oh no! Your customer tried to purchase an item that is no longer available. Rather than having her check back repeatedly to see if the item is back in stock, e-commerce merchants should allow customers to sign up for a helpful email notification for when the item is available again. The “back in stock” email should also include an easy checkout button to encourage the customer to make the purchase.

3. The Social Experience

Shopping is traditionally a social experience, but e-commerce is not always optimized to be interactive. A great way to make e-commerce social is to integrate your email campaigns with social media.

If you’ve enabled logging in via a social network that collects birthdates, such as Facebook, on your website, you can launch a special birthday email campaign. The email would display the upcoming birthday’s of a customer’s friends and family to inspire the spirit of gift giving.

Another social shopping and email tactic would be to design a referral bonus program to encourage customers to invite their friends to join your site. The best way to activate the referral program is to build a landing page that allows people to input their friends’ email addresses or to share the invite via social media. You can promote the landing page through a complementary email campaign.

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