THE COMMON SEO MISTAKES THAT ARE KILLING YOUR SEARCH RANK
THE COMMON SEO MISTAKES THAT ARE KILLING YOUR SEARCH RANK
There are innumerable off-page and on page SEO techniques available. But SEO is an evolving market technique hence it is important to be knowledgeable and be informed about new updates & new algorithms. Below, we have outlined 5 of the most common SEO mistakes you should be avoiding.
Lack of Unique title tags & meta descriptions
This is one of the biggest SEO mistakes. Do not have the same page title for all your website pages. Also, keep the titles and meta descriptions short and unique. Including the website name in the page title for homepage is highly recommended. Craft unique descriptions which provides more details about your business. We often tend to overlook alt tag images. Alt tag of images is important, because incase your website is taking some time to load, these tags will explain what the images actually represent. Unique title tags and meta description will help to increase your click-through rate(CTR) and may likely lead to high conversions as well.
Ineffective Keyword research
All good content writers, begin with keyword research. Though SEO has evolved, keywords are still important. Search engines have become more intuitive and can now understand the different words and phases. Also keep in mind, not to stuff your website with keywords which will make it look messy and unprofessional. Identify your ideal clients and put yourself in their shoes to think about the keywords and terms they would use to search for a business like yours. Focus on using keywords which will enhance the user experience.
Poor on page optimization
This also means, over-optimising your content. Google can even penalise you for this. For example, if you have a page about 6 healthy snacks for kids, use normal phases and words such as quick snack, healthy snack, simple snacks for kids etc. Do not stuff keywords, or use wrong keywords. Also, be sure your site has enough good reviews as online reviews are very important for search engines.
Duplicate Content
It is important to build trust between your website and users. This can be achieved by constantly updating new high quality content. The content should be informative, accurate, unbiased, insightful and most importantly ORIGINAL. Google can easily figure out, if the content being published by you is original or duplicate. A major mistake made my most websites is, using the product descriptions used by amazon, snapdeal and flipkart. Create your own unique descriptions, content if you want to rank higher so that the audience chooses your site and not your competitors. Have a blog and write smart fresh content on a regular basis as it will help you stand on top of your competitors in SERP.
Zero Social Media Presence
Social Media is the most effective way to promote your business and can positively affect your SEO efforts. Being social will help people to connect with you and visit your website. Research on the social media platforms, which is best suited for your audience and keep sharing content regularly. Have a well-defined profile, knowing who your ideal client is.
For example, if you are a home baker, you should primarily be active on Instagram and Facebook. Besides posting pictures of the products, you should engage the audience with free giveaways, contests, Q & A sessions and conducting workshops.
Closing thought
SEO is a long term commitment. There are no shortcuts and it is indeed a constant battle to rank high. The mistakes mentioned above are just some of the most important SEO mistakes. There are numerous other SEO mistakes, but these are the major ones which should be focussed first.
Looking for a reliable SEO Agency in Chennai?
We, at Crazy Hippos, have in-house SEO experts, content strategists, developers and writers who will maximise your business reach through strategies that work the best for your company. We also have a team of experts who’ll handle all your digital marketing needs with absolute professionalism and creativity at the same time. Call us and let’s create something amazing, together!
TIPS TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL FACEBOOK AD CAMPAIGN
TIPS TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL FACEBOOK AD CAMPAIGN
Since its conception, Facebook has become the favoured social media platform for advertising. If you are a startup or small business looking to make use of social media to boost your business, here’s a couple of things you ought to do to take full advantage of with Facebook’s nifty ad space:
Know what to advertise:
The basic rule here for all business fresh into the social media market is to first run an awareness campaign to make consumers know you exist. After a week or two begin to solely promote your specific product or service. This has to be your primary advertising for the long run and you can always try to be creative and link your offerings with selected special days.
Know whom to advertise:
This golden rule has found its way into the social media space and Facebook is giving advertisers a plethora of options when it comes to breaking down the Target Audience. Once you have a clear picture of which type of audience you want to cater to, Facebook let’s you narrow down the search right from demographics to behaviouristic patterns of your audience.
Know when to advertise:
Facebook lets you strategise when your ads have to appear on the surfing screens of your Target Audience. This is unpredictable at first but once you understand the pattern by looking at the impressions report you will get a clear idea when you most promising audience surf through and push ads at that specific time.
Know where to advertise:
One of the coolest ad tools Facebook offers; having the ability to decide where your ad appears on the site can be quite useful to boost ad impressions. Depending on how your audience utilise Facebook, you can choose whether ads have to appear solely on the mobile platform or both PC and mobile.
Know how to manage ads:
After all said and done, finding out if your ads worked is the most important task. While this is next to impossible on offline media, Facebook has a really handy tool where you can check real-time analytics of your ads performance. If you’re looking for better ROI, here are the key areas where Facebook shows analysis, depending on which you can re-strategise and optimise your online ads:
● Impressions – The number of times your ad was seen
● Reach – The number of individual people your ad was shown to
● Likes – The number of people who liked your ad
● Shares – The number of people who saw your ad and shared it
● Comments – The amount of comments on your ad
● Frequency – The number of times your ad was shown, on average, to a user.
● Click Through Rate – The percentage at which a consumer saw the ad and click through to the landing page.
● Page Likes – The number of likes generated for your Facebook page because of the ad.
Make this a regular practice and in no time, the only thing you have to be concerned about is crowd control on your Facebook page.
Do not have time to manage all your Social Media Pages?
We can help with everything. By everything, we mean digital strategising, creative post creation, content management, creative copywriting and even social media management. We have a team of experts who’ll handle all your digital marketing needs with absolute professionalism and creativity at the same time.
Reach us and let’s create something amazing!
HOW CAN YOU USE QUORA FOR MARKETING?
HOW CAN YOU USE QUORA FOR MARKETING?
According to Wikipedia, almost 40% of Quora users are from India. Have a look at the astonishing data that showcases the dominance of Indian users on Quora.
In the world, 39.7% user of Quora is from Indian Domain.
Source: Quora
Sources/References:
Alexa
Google Trends
Yes, it is indeed a normal question and answer service but ever since its launch in 2009, it has gained the attraction of people from various walks of life. You can find a retired Doctor to an aspiring 14-year doctor, top-level executives, journalists, students, entrepreneurs and even love gurus.
You will come across all types of questions starting from ‘how to build a website’ to ‘which is the best online shopping site for canvas shoes’, from ‘How should I bring positivity in life’ to ‘what will Batman say if he met Ironman’.
Here we have shared few marketing tactics for you strategically utilise this growing digital marketing platform and enhance your customer engagement.
Build a presence
Use your real name, mention your business and have a proper succinct profile. Do not use fake identities. Never misguide your audience. There have been cases where real quora fans have identity-shamed few profiles. Follow competitors, potential consumers, experts and everyone who is interested or related to your field.
Provide answers related to your field
After making your Quora Profile, go to your topic of expertise. Find an unanswered question which has many followers. Answer that question, make it a little opinionated. Make it sound realistic. Readers should not feel that the only reason you are answering is to popularise your brand.
Connect with the experts
Search the experts of your field. Follow them. Comment on their answers and make them remember you. Ask them questions. They might start reading your answers too. If they liked your answers, their followers will also get the notification on their wall, and there is a possibility that their followers might like your answer too. You can term it as indirect influencer marketing.
Talk to people
No, you don’t have to message them directly. You can start a discussion on the comment section as well. Be a part of the conversation. This is how you will build your business reputation. Respond to people who have liked your answer. You might be able to help out people in the comment section. Don’t miss any opportunity to connect with people. Upvote and respond as much as you can.
Ask good questions
You can utilise Quora for everything. Don’t be hung up on questions whose answer leads to your brand name. Instead, try to know what customers want from a product or service you provide; what are their expectations and issues they usually face. Try to understand your consumer. You can post other questions as well. Explore in every possible way.
“In Quora, the value is in the fact that you need to ask a good/interesting/intriguing question to get feedback from all those people out there.” — Hod Fleishman, founder and chief of safety at GreenRoad, a maker of driver technology.
Don’t self-promote or over-promote
Answer the questions on which you have a proficient knowledge. Your company is what you now know the best, so why don’t you start with that. Later, you can move on to all the questions related to your area of expertise. Quora is a place where you will find readers attracted to you only if you give quality answers.
Answer in a way that it adds value to your community and everyone related to it. Don’t put your product list everywhere bluntly. Introduce your product at the end of your answer. Again, the reader mustn’t feel that the only reason you chose to answer the question is to promote your product/brand. Don’t be afraid to talk to about your brand or product. But make sure your key focus is not on the product features but the answer quality. Readers will check out your product only when they are satisfied with the answer.
Few quick tips
● No grammatical mistakes. Make your content worth readable. People are hungry for information on Quora. Make sure yours is worth reading.
● Format your answer in an eye-catching way. Bold, Italics, uploading pictures options are available. Use them properly.
● Analyse your Quora stats regularly. View, Upvotes, Shares, the number of questions answers and asked. Analyse all the content you contribute.
● Talk, talk and talk to people. No content limits. You are free to provide as much information as you want. Make it interesting. Make it insightful.
Quora is great for idea curation, content sources, marketing, free networking and also offers survey opportunities. Don’t hesitate to explore this amazing digital platform that provides nothing but useful information.
HOW IMPORTANT ARE ONLINE REVIEWS AND HOW TO BOOST THEM?
HOW IMPORTANT ARE ONLINE REVIEWS AND HOW TO BOOST THEM?
Local search and reviews impacts the major part of your valuable customer’s journey, who is out looking for a product/service that you provide.
Do you know that over 50% of all local searches end in a purchase and 80% of local searches on mobile phones get converted. Now let’s talk about the ways in which the reviews help customers find your storefront/website and how you can make the most out of this critical channel.
Ensure Visibility
When you are being searched through Google, the reviews play a vital role in determining your visibility in the local search. We cannot determine which aspect is the most important player in the search (number, average rating, recency). But positive quality reviews will impact your “page placement” in organic search. Poor or less reviews will definitely affect your page rank and give in the positioning to competitors.
What makes it even more complicated?
Google’s user interface! It’s a buzz these days and have become very common, especially in the local search. Google allows users to filter results based on the review scores.
It simply means that visibility is a product of search engine’s algorithm and also a review doorway set by the user. All this is happening before the customer is even aware of your existence or you offering what he needs.
Do we like what we are seeing?
Let’s say your listings are visible, but poor or less reviews are shown upfront. Do you think the customer will click on your website with almost nil reviews or poor reviews, than the other website who is boasting their positive reviews?
comScore’s 7th annual Local Search Study has brought these statistics into limelight:
● 92% of consumers read online reviews
● 68% say positive reviews makes them trust a local business more
● Star rating is the number one factor used by customers to judge a service/project within seconds
● Only 13% of consumers consider a business with a 1 or 2-star rating
Visibility with good reviews is enough to make your potential customer come to your website. In order to win a customer and become their preferred choice, you have to bring positive reviews to the forefront. Which means, you have to manage your reviews actively.
Review Management Platform
Now that you understand–reviews are important enough to get you customers and that you should include it in your marketing strategy, let’s move to the next part.
Review Management–it isn’t easy, agreed. But don’t make the mistake of considering it invincible, because it’s not!
For you to take complete control over your review, you will require a review management platform. You can find plenty out there with a variety of price points.
But, in order to be effective, remember these five points; your review management must–
● Provide an overall dashboard that allows you to see the progress
● Integrate reviews from the other major aggregators such as Facebook, Google etc
● Help you develop an overall strategy
● Allow you to respond to the responses easily
● Highlight the incoming reviews to allow for a prioritized response
How can you maximise your review strength ?
These five tips can help you get the most out of your efforts in actively managing your reviews.
1. While selecting the review management platform, check for the review acquisition products and services. Monitoring and responding to reviews is only one part of the entire plan. Your must strategize on acquiring those positive reviews.
2. Utilize the members from social media, SEO and operations and build a cross-functional team for your review management strategy. Everyone of those hold a critical POV and will play an important role in devising and executing a good strategy.
3. Prioritize your focus through your platform. Check where your current customers are posting reviews, Facebook, Quora etc. Which review site can impact your domain?
4. Remember, many key customer touch points occur offline. Use customer journey mapping and collaborate to your operations and other team members to identify customers key touch points in order to ask and enable reviews.
5. Last but not the least–never miss an opportunity to ask for reviews. Don’t be one of those marketers whose customer journey ends with the delivery of the product/service. There are many ways to get the feedback, use email, customer service, automated ranking calls, delivery confirmations etc. Every small opportunity to extract a good review is important to your business in the big picture.
Looking for a reliable Digital Marketing Agency?
We can help with everything. By everything, we mean digital strategizing, creative post creation, content management, creative copywriting and even social media management. We have a team of experts who’ll handle all your digital marketing needs with absolute professionalism and creativity at the same time. Reach us and let’s create something amazing!
HOW TO OPTIMIZE MOBILE SITES FOR SALES
HOW TO OPTIMIZE MOBILE SITES FOR SALES
At present about 1.8 billion people use their mobile devices to shop online globally. However, by the end of 2019, over 2.5 billion mobile phone or tablet users will make mobile commerce transaction”.
In this blog we will focus on the same — that is how a business can succeed with mobile by having incredible experiences on website; and how exactly you can optimize your adword account which is Optimized Advertising.
Incredible Experiences
We have to give consumers exactly what they want.
When people want to know about your business or the services you offer, they will go through your website first. Earlier they used to get all the things through their desktop but now they will pick out their mobile phones and find you within seconds.
Thus, your mobile website has to be very well optimized.
Further, Provide a clear menu of your products. You could always have some sort of a pop up inviting users to subscribe or making users initiate some kind of action. Again, the kind of optimization you would do depend from website to website.
Guiding users taking action easily
Regardless of the product that you’re selling or the service you are offering, always induce mind behaviour. Always engage users to do some action on your website such as writing reviews, wishlists etc.
Giving users a beautiful and natural path to purchase
Study a person’s buying behavior on a particular website.This will be a time saving and convenient way for your consumers and for you as well. Again, the kind of website that you will be designing and the flow or the path will differ. But it is always better to look at your audience. Understand what all thing things they might be looking at. Watch all small micro- moments. Catch them and you could later optimize it and accordingly design your website.
Providing best experience considering consumer behaviour
In some instances people are looking to generate leads via a mobile websites. You can dwell up some forms in such scenarios. Forms which are easy to go through; and gets loaded on their interface easy. People must be able to fill out these forms. You would not want people to come to your website and then spend a lot of time just filling out forms rather than reviewing products and services.
Provide a clear and concise search box
if you have a lot of services and not sure of what the user might be looking for, having search box is very helpful. Allow the user to explore your content as much as possible. Place your content properly. This is where your content organisation skills come in.
Be concise and efficient in check out
People have various options to choose from not just yours. Anything that takes a lot of time, delays their search on website or the amount of time it takes for them from liking a product to buying it, might result in them leaving your website abruptly. You might lose your valuable customer to another website.
Make sure that you are mentioning all the points about checkout in one page itself. Allow people to have this seamless experience when they buy from your website.
PageSpeed Insights
40% of the people will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Try to ensure you page loads as soon as possible.
In order to improve your Page Speed Insights you can reach out to Google itself. There is a page insight tool. A simple Google search will help you with it.
All you have to do is to paste the URL’s of your website or the landing page URL’s. Their system will scan the website for you and tell you the speed of that particular website in a mobile and also on a desktop device. This tool will also tell you what all needs to be done or optimized to increase its speed.
This tool is very handy and self explanatory for all those who don’t have time and usually don’t get into such nitty-witty things.
Mobile friendly test
Just as simple as checking your PageSpeed; all you have to do here is paste the URL’s of your website or landing pages. The system will scan and let you know whether it is mobile friendly or not. If it is, it will give you a ‘Yes’ signal. If it’s not, then it will let you know the things that has to be taken care of.
It might look a little technical but one glance from your webmaster will make him understand what exactly has to be done.
Here’s a quick summary of what makes a good mobile website
- Have a nice homepage and site navigation must be easy
- Provide them the ability to convert
- Make it easily usable, which is the usability and form factor
- Certified UX partners for implementation (only when needed)
- Mobile site analysis and optimization suggestions
- Site search (must for those who sell a lot of products)
- Form entry (if you are looking to generate leads)
A summary of what we discussed to optimize everything:
TEST: Page speed insights, Mobile friendly test and follow best practices for mobile optimized websites.
FIX:Switch your website to a mobile friendly site
OPTIMIZE:Make sure you campaign is optimized for you site
MEASURE: The effect of strengthening your presence on mobile.
That is pretty much it. Happy Optimizing!
If you need assistance, reach out to us, Crazy Hippos! Let us discuss over a cup of creativity!
HOW EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING BENEFITS YOUR BUSINESS
HOW EXPERIENTIAL MARKETING BENEFITS YOUR BUSINESS
How Experiential Marketing Benefits Businesses
The future of advertising is all about experiential marketing.Traditional marketing is a part of our lives,and still is relevant and has an impact. However,today the foundation of marketing is solely based on customer-centric approach.Businesses these days do anything and everything to leave the consumer spellbound and enthralled owing to the numerous benefits the service/product has to offer. This is where experiential marketing comes into the picture.
What is Experiential Marketing?
Experiential marketing is any type of marketing which targets our 5 senses – hearing, eye sight,touch, taste and smell. People are sense-driven. By focussing on these senses,a unique bond gets created between the customer and the brand thus leaving a positive impact on them.
In simple words, traditional forms of advertising like print, television, radio focusses on conveying the brand visually and verbally by explaining about the service/ product along with their key/unique features. Whereas, experiential marketing targets in attracting the customers and stupefy them by engaging them with the product.
This not only creates an emotional link between the consumer and the brand, but also creates trust and influences their purchasing decisions.
Tips for Experiential Marketing
● Identify and research about your target audience
● Determine the message you want to convey and plan an event or experience regarding that
● Think about interactive, creative ways to communicate about the benefits of your brand to pull customers towards it
● Plan a creative, impactful experience which is enduring, catchy and unforgettable
● Devise plans to capture your customers through online engagement(Social Media Platforms)
● Create a hashtag which is relevant to the event and encourage people to share it through their social media posts
● Measure the success of your experiential campaign
Few Experiential Marketing Ideas
● Pop-up shows
● Classes / workshop
● Giveaways
Benefits of Experiential Marketing
● They help to provoke new and unique content. Write about the event and spread the word about it through blogs, social media posts and you can also publish testimonials of clients and audiences who attended the previous event of yours.
● They help in building brand affinity. In today’s modern age, customers focus more on the experiences rather than the price or product features. With the correct experiential marketing strategies, you can establish an affinity with your customers which is ultimately lead to better sales
● They help in getting attention. Experiential marketing is a great way to attract earned media. The chances are high that every local newspapers and social media pages may talk about your event. You can even approach influencers to talk about the event/brand on their page and channel.
How to make sure your event is a hit
● Build a buzz and fizz about the event weeks before the date
● Make sure the campaigns and marketing ideas have an emotional impact on your customers
● Look for partnership possibilities. Team up with organisations related to your event to boost the impact on your experiential marketing event. This will help to enhance your brand image.
● Intensify your campaigns through social media. Use hashtags to get people interested to take part in the event. With a tad bit of creativity, your event can become a massive hit among the audience.
Closing Thought
Experiential Marketing is one major way through which brands can differentiate themselves from their competitors. In the road ahead, experiential marketing is definitely going to rise in popularity.
No matter what industry your business belongs to, we at Crazy Hippos, can help you devise innovative and creative ways to market your event and brand. Reach out to us, and let us create something amazing together!
COMMON ADWORDS MISTAKES AND THEIR SOLUTION
COMMON ADWORDS MISTAKES AND THEIR SOLUTION
You use AdWords, we use Adwords, everybody uses AdWords; it is obvious.
It is one of the greatest methods to target potential customers who are looking for what you are offering through the most popular search engine in the world. A great source to generate targeted traffic indeed.
Now let’s focus on the problem, if your campaigns are not set properly then you might have very limited return or probably a total waste of money. In this blog we will focus on the Google AdWords Search Network, the most common mistakes made in it and how you can avoid them in order to get better results.
Problem no.1 — Not researching keyword properly
Keyword research is absolutely essential in Google Adwords Search Network.Your account won’t perform well unless and until you are targeting the most relevant terms which you customers are searching linking them to the services and products offered by you. We have seen apparel companies who are very bespoke and offer the latest neck-cut women’s wear but only target the term ‘women’s wear’. Sure, it gets them some traffic to their site, but because it wasn’t relevant to what exactly they offered, they sold nothing.
Solution
There are so many tools available out there to research keywords such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool, WordStream & SEMrush etc. You first have to look at your products or services, then determine a base list of what you think is relevant terms and then understand what variations of them people are using when they search using any of these tools.
Using Google Console or using your own sites search reporting in Google Analytics, will give you an idea of what is more relevant to you and your target customers.
Problem no. 2– Only using broad match terms
You must have seen this alot, ad groups with only Broad Match keyword in them. It is because it’s the default match type that Adwords sets a keyword in unless directed otherwise. It means that your broad keywords would serve your ads; to anyone searching for your search phrase in any order whatsoever, or synonyms of your keywords or any other relevant search term.
As you must have guessed it from the name, it is broadly matching to your desired terms which means that your ads serve for much less relevant searches. This could cost money if at all you receive an irrelevant click or lower your click through as the user did not click your ad at all.
Solution
Either you or your hired SEO Specialist can include some Broad Match terms in your account. In cases where you either limited on budget or trying to drive highly targeted leads/sales, it’s less risky to target using Exact Match keywords, Phrase, Modified Broad Match. It is very transparent when it comes to measuring success.
Problem no. 3–Not using negative keywords
There are plenty of accounts not using the negative keywords, mostly because the current AdWords web platform does not specifies that you need it at the first hand.
AdWords allows you to use negative keywords as a way to exclude keywords that are not a good match to your product.
For example, if you sell designer women’s shoes but not athletic shoes, then you would not want you ad to show up when someone searches ‘women’s running shoes’, but at the same want it to show when a consumer searches ‘Women’s shoes’. Thus, you will add ‘running’ as a negative word.
Solution
Just as you research your keyword, you have to do research for your negatives. This will prevent you to spend money, which goes wasted on clicks for irrelevant terms and help to improve the account health overall. Negative keywords a=can be added to both the ad campaign and ad group level.
Problem no. 4– Too many adwords in an ad group
It all comes to one thing- targeting an ad to your user’s query, and for that you have to make sure that your ad groups are set up right. Yes, having many similar keywords in an ad group does sounds logical, but the trouble is, having too many adwords in a group can make you ad i the ad group match the user’s query. This will lower the CTR and harm the health of the campaign.
Not using ad groups is one another mistake people usually make. Instead of segmenting their ads into the groups based on similar type of keywords, they mix all the adwords into same ad group and show everyone the same ad.
Solution
Have a single, or at least two to three keywords ad groups, but certainly not more than 20 adwords per ad group. Through this, you can tightly control the ad copy which the user’s views and make it very closely relevant to the query they make. It will boost your CTR which in turn will help you lower your CPCs for the target terms, thus getting more conversions.
Problem no.5– Not considering ad scheduling
Ad scheduling on your campaigns is directly going to increase your performance. They are campaigns that are set live 24/7. This might constrain the account and limit its potential.
Some reasons to set up scheduling:
Business Hours: If you know that you are not going to offer your services at certain times of the day or know that the user might not search for your service at 3am, then there is no use of having your account live at that time.
Limited budgets: Set your campaigns time wisely especially when you have budget constraints. Reduce the time that it is live for only the prime search or buying ti es of the day for your business.
Solution:
Use Google Analytics and AdWords available to segment the best time of the day and the best day of the week to determine the best times to run your campaigns live. If you find a time or a day which is highly profitable and performs best then it would be appropriate to migrate that ad group.
Closing Thought
There are so many other mistakes that people make today but we these are the top five. Plan your campaigns, research you restructures and targeting, scrutinize your account and keep optimizing it.
If you have any questions after reading this article or need any help regarding any other issue that you might be facing in your adwords campaign, then leave a comment or reach out to us. We Crazy Hippos will be happy to assist you.
Social media branding strategies businesses must follow
SOCIAL MEDIA BRANDING STRATEGIES BUSINESSES MUST FOLLOW
Social media is being used for a variety of purposes today. Whether it’s selling of products, content marketing, gaining subscribers, customer support, persuading followers to your brand point and swaying their hearts, social media provides you the perfect platform to reach out to your target audience and build your brand.
A recent research from Econsultancy shows that 71 percent of brands plan to invest more heavily in social media in the coming year in order to gain new followers and build the reputation of their brand. You must also be looking to join the list of ‘known brands’ in your industry.
However,today everyone is into strengthening their online brand profiles,thus to stand out,you must differentiate your brand’s identity. But the problem is, with so many different social media platforms available and each of them are loaded with competition, how will one carve out their own brand’s position on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc.
Here’s everything you need to understand about successfully using the social media platform to build a recognisable brand known for its positive qualities that will help you gain and retain followers. Read on and find out.
1. Choose the right networks that support your brand image
You shouldn’t blame yourself if your are unable to gain any traction on some of the social media platforms you are active on. There are hundreds of social media apps out there and it is normal to get tempted and jump into all of them to try them out. But, you must understand that not every social media platform will go for your brand or product. You must be careful in finding the network that fits with your brand’ image. Otherwise, you will find yourself struggling to make any progress.
- Facebook is the best platform today for increasing brand awareness. Facebook can prove to be a great platform for promoting any brand virtually, mostly because of its huge user base.
- Instagram, who’s parent company is Facebook, is another great option for the brands that are mostly into images, such as the clothing companies and retailers or any apparel startups. It is immensely effective for reaching young adults.
- Pinterest, on the other hand, is an excellent network to reach out to women, especially for those brands who are into jewellery or clothing. Also, it will be useful to reach out professional writers.
- LinkedIn is the ultimate network if you operate a B2B business rather than B2C. You can easily connect with corporate influencers and promote your business-related content.
2. Utilise Visual Branding and develop Brand’s voice
Visuals are very important and are proven effective in social media branding. But be consistent, if your profile in one network looks different from another, then it will create discomfort among users and will also come off as they are owned by two different companies. You must have your branding to be consistent in all your channels. Through this, people will automatically recognize your company regardless of the site they are using.
Coca Cola can be taken as the best example. If you will go through their Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages, you will notice the consistency in their colour and design.
With visuals comes your voice. Your brand’s personality must be reflected in the posts you make. You must develop your social media voice, which is the way your brand communicates through the tweets, Facebook posts, etc. Be sure of the tone you are taking, for example, Coca Cola’s tone is more conversational rather than formal. Consider your target audience, your brand’s culture and authenticity before finalizing the brand’s voice.
3. Produce and Provide Valuable Content
This goes without saying that content is the major player in your communication. In order to create a strong brand reputation you must focus on creating useful content that your target audience would want to share further, rather than the usual uninteresting lines that doesn’t go farther than your common subjects.
Remember these principles while crafting your content for social sharing:
- Each content produced by you must support your brand’s image. Humour is difficult to pull off but if at all your are using memes then make sure that they are used effectively. Memes can be powerful brand-building tool today as there are separate pages in Facebook and Twitter which are only into memes post. But in cases where you are not sure of the type of feedback you will receive with the meme strategy then resist the temptation to create memes. It can have harmful results also.
- Understand which type of content will gain visibility on your social network. Good images will prove to be more effective. You won’t need more content with the images, one-liners would do too.
- Never be afraid to use visual content. Articles that have images in it receives 94 percent more views. Twitter content with images will receive twice the number of views than expected, even though you must have noticed that there are seven times more text posts on twitter.
Remember, you must post regularly. Nothing will kill you branding strategy or effort more than irregular posting.
4. Connect with Influencers
Providing interesting, creative and killer content regularly is one of the important aspect but it is not the only aspect required for promotion. Content posted by Starbucks or Nike will get more engagement as they are established brands for decades. But if you are new then make sure that your voice doesn’t gets lost in the noise
One of the fastest and best ways to amplify your branding results is to leverage audiences existing influencers in your industry have already built. You have to build relationships with influencers. It will help you get the audience that is already established in your industry. The trust and respect is there among the audience, get cosigned or mentioned from them and you will see the results.
5. Engage, Encourage and Echo
Post regularly with facts, creative content, events. Conduct campaigns to encourage people to participate, make them a part of your brand. Reply to their comments, tweets and messages. Engage them, let them know that you are there to hear their queries and responses.
Get yourself a professional social media team that will handle all your social media networks and keep the audience engaged.
Once you successfully perform all the steps, your brand’s name will echo in the social media platform. You will be known, you will be preferred and you will be identified.
Do not have time to manage all your Social Media Pages?
We can help with everything. By everything we mean digital strategising, creative post creation, content management, creative copywriting and even social media management. We have a team of experts who’ll handle all your digital marketing needs with absolute professionalism and creativity at the same time. Reach us and let’s create something amazing!
3 BEST WAYS TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT THROUGH FACEBOOK
3 BEST WAYS TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT THROUGH FACEBOOK
Facebook engagement is when a content piece reaches the audience and they are forced to drop in response to it. You can also call it a content that creates an impact on people and they relate to it in one way or another. In a hyperactive world where the attention span has reduced to microseconds. It’s imperative to come up with new ways to ensure that your consumer is still hooked to you.
If you have felt that irrespective of how much you are posting online, customers likes, and the response is always low then maybe what you are doing is not relatable to them. Talking about relatability doesn’t really mean you have to talk about their likes and dislikes. There are multiple ways you can trigger the response from the consumer. Here we have listed a couple of ways you can do so and drive results and engagement.
User-Generated Content Always Wins
People trust people more than anyone else. Using the testimonials to create trust and engagement is one of the tried and tested methods brands have used for ages. Take Dove for example. Most of their ads are where women are talking about how their skin has turned softer and smoother after continuous use. You can do the same for digital platforms. Collect reviews and testimonials from your customers and post them across Facebook.
Sharing the content sent by your customer shows how much you care about your consumer community. You can experiment with this content as well. Instead of simply showing a testimonial, you can show a customer journey. How a customer faced an issue and your team successfully solved it within a limited time-frame. It will not only show a happy customer but also how steadfast you are when it comes to taking care of your consumer base. Furthermore, you can run a campaign on sharing reviews from the different audience on your product. If you have an FMCG product, you can share what a teenager feel about it, a mother, working professionals, so on and so forth. It will show the diversity in your consumer base and strengthen your brand in the market.
Run a contest
The best way to connect with the audience and drive engagement is through running a contest. You don’t have to go large scale. You can run a simple puzzle contest wherein people send back responses of guessing a word, simplifying the jumbled image of your product, etc. A contest can be anything simple, fill in the blank, find the difference, etc. You can also run a contest wherein they can share selfies while using your product or a content piece related to the theme of your product.
All you have to do is to make sure that the contest is fun, does not require too many clicks or becomes troublesome for customers to play it, and there is a price at the end of it such as a coupon, voucher, free hamper, etc. A little post boost can take you a long way, so do consider that as well.
Always use the Topical Days
Another important way is to tap into the festive and important days to connect with the audience. It is the best time to get closer to your audience. You can run a campaign dedicated to a festive season or simply have a single post that talks to the customer and wishes them. A simple post also does a lot because that way consumer remembers you. Your post comes across them and subconsciously you get registered in their mind. Plus, if your post is creative enough, there are possibilities of it getting shared and driving a new customer base and larger engagement. That’s just like icing on the cake.
Always remember, topical posts are a good way to leverage your brand. But it is important that the content produced is relevant to the consumer and still revolves around your business or product. It has to be a win-win situation for both. Topical posts are a good way to humanize your brand, make a difference, and interact with your audience.
Apart from these, you can also try to go live on Facebook as it increases engagement in big time. You can share your own updates and go beyond business i.e., your recent CSR undertaking, community projects, etc. These are some of the common ways your brand can rise above the competitive level and attract audience and engagement towards it.
If you are looking for a detailed and more customized engagement plan for your brand, reach out to us. We have a team of digital experts and content professionals who will help your brand reach its maximum social media potential.
