Social Media Marketing

Marketing used to be much simpler when people drove to your business to make a purchase. Maybe they made a phone call beforehand to check inventory or pick your brain, but buying was usually done face to face. Society’s migration to online communication has made marketing more complicated with the addition of retargeting, data mining, consumer profiling and social media marketing.

A company’s communication tool set is more powerful than ever. One of the valuable tools that marketers have lost in this new, online world is human credibility. When consumers only know you from the advertising they see on and offline, they get an incomplete picture of the people who work for you. They still care about those people when they consider buying from your company. Social media marketing brings our online world back together by creating platforms where relationships can be cultivated with great efficiency.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world because humans love social networks. We’ve become accustomed to having access to instant information at every level. Spending huge amounts of time on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allows us to continue having our interactions at that speed. Social media marketing is a way of meaningfully connecting with your customers at a level which gives them a more personal connection to your company. Facebook also provides tools that allow you to place advertising in front of very precise demographic groups. This makes it some of the best-targeted marketing tools available. The personal and advertising sides of social media marketing give you new chances to increase traffic to your company, and both should be used.

Social media is the new “business handshake.” It’s how most consumers build a more complete picture of the people inside a company before making a purchase. You need to be using Facebook, Youtube and Twitter at a minimum. Other useful platforms that can help your website’s SEO are Instagram and Pinterest, and we’ll talk about these below.

How Will Social Media Marketing Benefit Your Business?

Most consumers have had bad experiences with businesses that made them feel dehumanized. American business is often seen as greedy and impersonal. Social networking provides a place to show consumers that your company is human, sympathetic, and responsive to customers. Social networks give them a more complete picture of the people behind your brand.

If most of your customers are in Wichita, KS, Facebook can expand your local audience since people tend to be Facebook friends with other people in their area. When your Facebook fans make positive comments about your company or its people, you become visible to their friends in Wichita, helping expand your local brand presence.

Social marketing is different than advertising, which uses specific and recognizable formulas to communicate with consumers. People know advertising when they see it and hear it, and they assume it will:

• Portray your company and products in the best possible light
• Be impersonal
• Leave out important information about your ethics and world views, that, like it or not, are going to affect their purchase decisions.

Make no mistake: advertising is very important. Interestingly, 21st century consumers don’t mind being advertised to. They expect it. It’s part of the fabric of our online world. But while advertising does a great job of painting a picture of your brand, explaining product features, and sharing special promotions, it does very little to humanize your company. Social networking gives you an opportunity to fill in these blanks in a mass media setting. But you have to remember, social media posts should not look like advertising most of the time.

Using Facebook for Business

Creating a Business Account

Facebook makes it easy to set up your business account. Start here, and they’ll guide you through steps. Unlike your personal Facebook page, your business page has some very specific goals:

• To clearly identify what your business does as quickly as possible. If your company name is abstract or esoteric in nature, consider adding a short descriptor to your Facebook business page name. For example, an essential oils manufacturer named “Heaven Scent” might use the “Heaven Scent Essential Oils” as a Facebook page name. The About section of your page should expand on this information.
• To represent your company in a positive light, especially behind the “Green Curtain” of your advertising.
• To give page visitors a clear call to action. Facebook gives pages a button to do this with. Your call to action button can take people to your website, online store, contact information, or an overview video.

Optimizing Your Business Account

Optimizing a Facebook business account isn’t much different than optimizing a website or YouTube video. Search engines show results based on the keywords users type into the search bar. When you consider a name for your page, include keywords that will put your page in those results when people look for your product or service.

Create a vanity URL for your page rather than using the random letters and numbers that Facebook automatically assigns. This helps web searchers to find you, and it looks more deliberate in the URL bar of someone’s browser.

Choose your profile picture and cover photo well. Your cover photo is the first thing people will see when they visit your page. It should clearly and positively represent your brand. Your profile picture will appear in search results when consumers search for your product, so it should also give a sense of what you have to offer.

Use the About section to share useful information such as your web domain, phone number, address, other social media handles, and hours of operation.

Link to your Facebook page whenever possible: on your website, in your YouTube video descriptions, and on blogs. Every backlink pointing toward your Facebook page boosts its SEO power, ranking it higher in search engine results.

You can use Facebook apps to do even more with your page, such as adding tabs or running contests and promotions integrated with email campaigns. HooteSuite has an excellent article on Facebook apps for business. Check it out!

Using Facebook Page Insights

Page Insights is Facebook’s version of user analytics. It’s rich with information about the demographics of people engaging with your page and posts. It will show you how many people you’re reaching, the demographics of those people, and which posts are receiving the most comments and reactions. This allows you to adjust the content of future posts to better appeal to your target audience.

Contact US Logo for help with this.

Creating and Boosting Posts

Creating a post is exactly the same process you use for your personal Facebook account. Try to make posts as brief and dynamic as possible. Include images and video whenever possible. They’re much more eye-catching than text. Facebook recently added a colored background option for posts, which makes text-only posts stand out more.

Facebook also allows you boost posts, which amounts to turning a post into an ad. These posts longer on feeds than a normal post. You can use this affordable medium to highlight posts about promotions, industry information, community awards, and recognition you’ve received. You’ll find very rich tools in this part of Facebook to focus on the audience you’re trying to reach.

Using Facebook Ads

Old-school advertising in newspapers and on radio was like loading your message into a confetti cannon and firing it into a random crowd. Some of the confetti landed on qualified prospects who stand a snowball’s chance of buying something from you. Most of the confetti was wasted on unqualified prospects who simply didn’t need what you offer.

By comparison, Facebook ads are like laser beams that target a much higher percentage of the people you’re looking for.

When placing your ad, you can select the age, location, gender and interests of your desired target audience. You can also set daily budgets and spend as much or as little as you want on a campaign. We highly recommend using these for most local businesses.

Contact US Logo for help with this.

Using Your Personal Facebook Account for Branding

You can’t turn your personal Facebook page into a constant extension of your business page, or people will stop engaging with you. You can share carefully crafted messages that show your personal pride in your company, its products, and people. When you post to your personal page, make it personal. Let your ego out, sometimes, with posts like, “I’ve spent many a sleepless night working on this new product, and it’s finally ready to share!” Show your community consciousness with posts like, “So proud to work with these school kids on a community garden! They’re the greatest!”

On the other hand, repeated personal posts like “Stop by the store today for $5 off!” will turn Facebook users off. Again, keep it personal.

Yes, You Need to be on YouTube

YouTube is in a class all its own among social networks. People watch more video now than ever, and the numbers rise every year. We’re becoming a society of viewers rather than readers. YouTube makes it possible to carry on conversations with your target audience that don’t fit well into advertising. It gives you a platform to show products, showcase workplace life, and puts a face to your brand.

YouTube is free, easy to use, and a great place to pump up your SEO because Google tends to favor video when it sends its bots out to crawl around the web and see what looks interesting and relevant.

US Logo can help you set up your channel, produce professional looking videos, and optimize them to direct traffic back to your website. YouTube is slightly more difficult to work with than a Facebook page, but not much. Here are the basics:

How to Set up a YouTube Channel

Go to YouTube.com and sign in in the top right corner of the page, then log in under the Google account you want your channel to be associated with. Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner and then click on the gear button to access your settings. Click on Create a Channel and select the option to “Use a business or other name” at the bottom of the popup window, then name your business in the next window. Done! You now have a basic YouTube Channel.

Customize Your Channel Art

You can customize your channel icon and banner to make your brand instantly recognizable on the channel. Let’s start with the banner:

• Sign into your account.
• Click on My Channel in the top right menu.
• Click on new channel art, then add channel art.
• Hover over the default banner, then click on the pencil icon and select Edit channel art.
• Upload the image you want to use for your banner. This image should be 2560 x 1440 pixels.
• Make any needed adjustments to the cropping of the image.
• Click Select.

Your channel icon will need to be set up in Google+, which is connected to your Youtube channel. If you didn’t already have a Google+ account, you do now; it’s automatic when you set up a Youtube channel. Here’s how to customize it:

• Sign into Youtube.
• Click your default icon at the upper right of the page.
• Click Creator Studio.
• Click VIEW CHANNEL under your channel name at the top.
• Hover over your default icon, then click the pencil button.
• Click Edit. This will take you to your Google+ page, where you’ll be prompted to:
• Upload a photo from your computer.
• Crop the photo as needed. (Your photo should be square.)
• Click Done, and there you are: channel art.

Adding Videos

• Once you’re signed in, pretty much every Youtube page you go to will have an upload button in the upper right, a fat, upward arrow with a line under it. Click it!
• You’ll see a huge window that says Select files to upload. You can either drag your video into this area from your hard drive or click inside it to pull up a navigation window for your drive. Choose your video there and click Open.
• You’ll see a window that allows you to change the name and video thumbnail, and to add tags, a description and playlist assignments.
• Click Publish. Congratulations. You’re on the air!

Cheap Video or Hollywood Production?

YouTube has not only lowered expectations for quality video production, it has entirely validated low quality production for most people. That’s what happens when any little boy or girl can grow up to be a YouTube star. Should you use low quality video to represent your company? No. The commercial bar hasn’t moved so much. People still expect your brand to have a certain sparkle and clarity before they trust it.

Your videos don’t have to be Star Wars quality either, but you should give some attention to lighting, framing, and sound when you use video to represent your company. Place your subject in well-lit spot, and move lights, if necessary, to get more light on the subject than the background. For sound, try to reduce background noise, and turn noisy equipment off when shooting, especially if you’re using a smartphone camera. Shoot in a quiet office or other location if you can. For framing, place your subjects slightly off center. If your subject is a person, place them a third of the way across the frame. These simple tricks will go a long way in making your production look professional.

If you have the budget, hire a professional. Again, it doesn’t have to be costly. US Logo’s RocketCinema offers low-cost video production with access to movie-quality production tools and crew for a couple hundred dollars per video. If you’re within driving distance of US Logo in South Central Kansas, this option can really put you ahead of competitors.

Optimizing Your YouTube Channel

YouTube channel and video optimization centers around the use of keywords. As smart as Google search algorithms are, they can’t “read” what’s in a video. You have to add your keywords – the same keywords you use on your website – to your channel description. This is editable by hovering over the default description below your channel banner and clicking on the pencil. Use a couple of sentences or a paragraph to describe your company and the content you’ll be featuring on your channel. Use your keywords in this description.

To add your website link to your channel, click on the gear button at the top right of your channel and click on CHANNEL in the vertical menu at the left. Then click the Advanced button at the bottom of the drop-down menu. Scroll down in the popup window and select Associate website. Type in the URL for your website and click Add. Now you need to verify that this is your site by clicking on verify. Click on Alternate methods, select your Domain name provider and follow the instructions.

Contact US Logo for help with this.

Optimizing Your Individual YouTube Videos

When you upload a video, use the form fields provided to describe your video and do some mild promotion of your company. Add a link to a page on your website related to the video topic in the description. Be sure to use that page’s main keyword in the video’s title and description.

Add tags, the main keyword, and then add more general keywords for your business. These include geographic information like “Wichita KS,” “South Central Kansas,” etc.

These words will attract Google’s bots, then they will follow the link you placed back to the landing page on your site, boosting its SEO mojo.

Other Social Media Platforms

By now you have a sense of the importance of social media marketing. Other social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest have unique advantages that make them worthwhile to explore. When it comes to sharing the vision and people behind your brand with potential customers, it is important to learn how to use them well. If you need help with social media marketing, that’s what we’re here for. Contact us for professional help that’s effective and affordable at (316) 264-1321 or email orders@uslogo.net. Let’s put your social networks to work!

Click here to view Social Media pages…

 

 

 

 

Social media advertising are everything in today’s SEO marketing world. Give us a call 316-264-1321 or visit us at 520 N. West St. Wichita, KS. 67203 and we’ll be happy to help you with your social media needs.