Canadian Small Business Women

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Social Media: 4 things to focus on other than follower count

If you have 10,000 followers, but no one is buying from you, then who cares if you have 10,000 followers? If you have 100 followers and 100 people are buying from you, doesn’t that seem better? It’s time for businesses to start prioritizing engagement over follower count when it comes to social media. Follower count is a vanity metric that really doesn’t do much to drive your business unless it is paired with high engagement.

We have to retrain our brains to think differently when it comes to social media. Here are four things to focus on instead of follower count.

#1: Quality of followers

High quality followers are highly engaged and even loyal customers. They will be the first to act as brand ambassadors because they know you and they believe in what you have to say. This will help to increase brand awareness so you are top of mind. Overall, focusing on building a community of high quality followers will lead to more meaningful and relevant interactions.

#2: Engagement metrics

Increased engagement usually means higher visibility and a more interactive social experience within your community. It is also indicative of how much your audience likes your content. A few of the engagement metrics you can track are likes, comments, shares/retweets, and saves. Certain platforms favour different metrics over others. For example, Instagram algorithms favour saves and shares. The key to tracking engagement is that you should identify your overall social media goals first so you can choose which metrics you want to focus on most. Your content strategy may vary based on different metrics.

#3: Content value

Everything you do should be centered around the needs of your audience. If you focus on providing value for your audience you will find that your connection becomes stronger. It will also increase overall engagement. You can provide value through various different content strategies. A few to try are:

  • Long captions: More information sharing, and encourages people to save/bookmark your posts
  • High impact visuals: This will increase sharing and help to draw people to your content
  • Giving away almost too much information for free: Especially good for professional services, it showcases your expertise and separates those that want to do DIY from those that would prefer to pay for a professional.
  • Video: Your audience is consuming more and more video online because it is easy to digest information.

Test what content resonates best with your audience or, better yet, ask them what they want to see. If you’re really listening, you will get some great insight into the types of content you should create.

#4: Timing

Timing is everything on social media. While many social media platforms have built in analytics to show you when your audience is online or when they are most active, it takes a bit a trial and error to find what works best for you. Plan ahead and track when you are posting so you can see what works best.

Stop looking at social media as a popularity contest and start getting more social with your strategy. The more emphasis you put on your relationship with your followers, the more successful your strategy will be.

Candace Huntly is Founding Partner at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.

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A version of this article was originally posted to the SongBird Marketing Communications blog.

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5 Ways to Make Your Audience Love Your Brand

CHuntly

Without an audience, it’s kind of hard to run a business. A growing customer base will drive your business growth. There are a lot of other brands out there, so how do you get your customers to choose you over your competitors? And once you have their attention, how do you build a loyal, long-term relationship with them?

Here are five ways for you to create a strong and loyal relationship with your audience. Five ways to get them to fall in love with you.

  1. Be authentic: If you are constantly selling and trying to put a spin on your sales pitch, you will come across like a pushy and dishonest salesman who will say anything to get the sale. Your brand should have characteristics that are attractive to your audience – values and ethics that show what you stand for. When you communicate with your audience, find ways to make personal connections with them that go beyond selling. Once they are loyal to your brand, the sale is inevitable because what you are offering will be top of mind.
  2. Talk with them, not at them: Many brands get stuck in a rut where they are constantly pumping out content, but they don’t take the time to interact with their audience. It should be about generating meaningful dialogue on your marketing channels, whether more traditional or digital. In many cases, brands could put out less content if they up the engagement factor with their audience. It becomes a case of quality vs. quantity. And if you are a small business owner wearing multiple hats, it’s about finding efficiencies in your marketing strategy that will get you higher returns on your efforts.
  3. Tell them you appreciate them: That feel-good feeling is pretty contagious. If your existing customers are happy, they will tell their friends. Create opportunities to show your appreciation through loyalty programs and content that is directed towards customers. The brands that do well are as grateful for an audience of 500 as they are an audience of 500,000. You will find that once you start appreciating each individual customer they will start multiplying pretty fast.
  4. Create an experience: You should showcase the positive experiences your audience can have with your brand through your blog, social media, and other channels. Take it a step further and create those experiences through public stunts and events where they can’t help but get involved with your brand. Not only will this showcase what you have to offer, but it will generate an emotional connection with your audience because you are making a direct impact on their lives.
  5. Love yourself: Self-hype can be detrimental if you ignore things that should be improved. However, you can’t make someone else love you if you don’t love yourself. You should always start out looking internally, getting to know your brand, and pointing out everything that is great about your brand. This will jumpstart any successful marketing strategy.

Candace Huntly is the Founder and Principal at SongBird Marketing Communications, an award-winning agency working to take organizational and individual brands to the next level. With a passion for all things related to creativity and strategy, she specializes in business intelligence, marketing & branding, content strategy & development, media & influencer relations, and social media. Basically, if you need to put your brand, product, or cause in the public eye, she will find a way to do it, while making the approach unique to you.

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Social media metrics demystified

Evelyn

 

Happy New Year! I hope that like me, you had a restful, enjoyable holiday and that you’re looking forward to the opportunities of the coming year.

It’s at the turn of the year that we often take some time to make new goals, check our progress on existing targets and discard those aims that no longer apply. So it’s during this season of goal-setting that I think it’s important to take a look at your social media numbers.

When marketers talk about social media metrics, most small business owners tend to get lost in the jargon. But all metrics mean are the numbers we attach to our impact of our social media accounts. This can be as simple as how many followers your Twitter account has or as complex as how many sales you made that can be linked to a specific social campaign.

But let’s keep it simple shall we.

First let’s talk about why you need these numbers. Social media metrics act as gauge for how well you’re doing online. If you’re putting out quality content, engaging in conversations and maintaining a consistent presence on your networks, then your numbers should reflect that. If not, you might need to revaluate the content, audience or platform you’re working with.

Metrics give marketers, or small business owners, a way to determine a return on investment (ROI) for the time and money spent on social media marketing. They’re a way to value impact, ensure you’re reaching the right audience and provide feedback on what you’re doing right and what you should change.

There are three main areas that you should look at when trying to determine your social media impact: number of followers, how many followers are seeing and interacting with your content and which content is most successful. Each social network has its own way of tracking these interactions, so it’s important to find out what metric works best for each platform. For the purpose of this article, I’ll be taking a look at Facebook and Twitter.

 

Count your followers

The most basic way to tell if anyone is seeing your content is by determining how many followers you have. In theory, this should be the number of people who are potentially seeing your content at any given time, however in practice, only a fraction of your followers see your content.

 

Reach and engagement

While the number of followers is important, more important is how many of these people are actually seeing your content. On Facebook your Reach determines this metric. Reach is calculated by Facebook’s internal algorithms, the quality of your content and if you purchase ads. For Twitter, this number is not as easily tracked and is determined by how many of your followers are online at any given time.

Because the reach of your content is often out of your control, an easier number to look at is your engagement. On Facebook this number is based on how many people view, click or interact with your content. On Twitter you can track your engagement by counting how many clicks your tweets have. Unfortunately this metric is usually only accessible through paid metrics services such as Sprout Social. Another way to look at this number is by counting your link clicks. You can sign up for a free service called bit.ly that tracks this number for you.

 

Content is king

The most important metric you can track is how many of your followers are actually interested in your content. On Facebook this can be tracked by counting the likes, shares and comments on individual posts. The number of likes or shares your content gets determines how interesting your followers find it. On Twitter you can gauge your follower’s engagement by calculating retweets and mentions. Both of these metrics can tell you if your content is having an impact on your followers.

 

Once you start taking a closer look at your social media numbers you will need to set some goals. This way you can see if your time online is actually bringing you the results you want. Keep the goals small at first and then increase them as your business grows. Record your social media metrics on a spreadsheet or document each month so you can track your growth as the year goes on. This will also help you make new goals for your social marketing activities next year.

 

Good luck and happy 2015!

Evelyn Senyi is the owner and chief marketer for Recurve Marketing, a Toronto-based digital marketing agency that offers creative, effective and affordable marketing strategies for Canadian small businesses and non-profit organizations. Follow Recurve on Twitter @recurve_ca and on Facebook www.facebook.com/recurvemarketing.ca.

Is Engagement On Social Media A Return On Your Investment?

Malene Jorgensen

When people talk about social media marketing, there seems to be a focus on what you are getting in return. How is your timely investment measured? How is that investment related to sales? Some people tend to believe that just because you start sharing links on Facebook and Twitter, you will make money. Sure, there are success stories of people making lots of money online with their businesses, but this is far from the norm.

In other words, just because you are sharing links to your e-commerce store or your online products doesn’t mean you will see any returns on this investment. Instead, you may need to change your view of social media marketing all together to see just how useful it can be.

It really isn’t about how many products you sell every time you share a link. Instead, it is about the relationships you create on the network and about how you continue to nurture them. The investment really comes down to the engagement you have on these networks. If you start conversations, chances are that you will gain some loyal customers. So, when you do end up releasing a new product or service, people are more likely to invest in them if they are suited for their needs.

If you have thousands of followers who are excited about your business and you aren’t seeing any purchases, the problem may not be with your social media marketing. One common problem I stumble upon often is that people will disregard their Twitter or Facebook followers because they aren’t seeing any sales. But your social media marketing efforts may be paying off. The followers may be coming to your website – which is the goal of social media marketing – but they are turned off by your website. Then, they leave again without making a purchase.

You can find out whether this is a problem by implementing an analytics system to your business website, so you can see how many people are coming from Twitter or Facebook. You need to analyze all the steps in your social media strategies to determine what isn’t working. Only then can you find your social media success – and see the returns on your timely investments.

 

Malene Jorgensen is an entrepreneur, author and speaker. Jorgensen is passionate about online content, blogging, online business development and e-commerce. She owns an international media publishing company and a design studio. Jorgensen has written several books that are sold in over 50 countries. She is also obsessed with coffee and Twitter. You can reach Malene Jorgensen at Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram 

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