With the new timeline Facebook has rolled out we’ve developed these tips to help you improve your brand image and enhance your social marketing strategy. Using this feature effectively can really help your brand become more relevant, aware and successful as you build your social media presence. Below are three main tips you need to know in order to effectively make the most out of your timeline cover photo.
Make it Real
You want your image to be something users associate your brand with. For example this was an amazing opportunity for us here at Grow Socially to show people what our team is all about. Our new timeline opens up with a great image of our faces showing off who we are and what we do. We’re a friendly fun collection of young professionals with a passion for social media and mobile marketing. This is a snapshot of your organization and like a book cover is what pulls customers in to see what’s inside. Other brands like Ben & Jerry’s are leveraging this feature as well to show you who and what they are. The simple and recognizable cows that Ben & Jerry’s fans have adored so much is well incorporated into their cover photo while their branded logo remains as their profile picture across the rest of Facebook.
Make it Relevant
You want your profile picture to remain the face of your brand while you post content across Facebook. Use your new cover photo as a place to showcase your most recent and relevant content. Think of this as a frequently updated billboard for your company. When users go to your page what do you want them to remember when they leave? I’m sure they look at your cover and quickly as they scan through posts on their wall. For example Taco Bell kills it on this idea by posting like crazy about their new products and other campaigns they offer with awesome Cover Photo’s to match.
Make it Rapid
Your message like I said above needs to be relevant and quick. Make sure you meet the dimensions we are providing below and use them to your advantage. Quick and easy get your message on their with the right images and relevant text. What are the buzz words around your product and why would I as a user want to like your page? Make sure those answers are incorporated into the image you create for your cover and make the most of the area that is provided.
For more tips and help with your social media efforts contact us at Grow Socially and let our team become a part of yours.
Inbound marketing is a popular topic in the worlds of business and communications today… but for good reason: an effective inbound marketing strategy can truly help your organization grow!
Today, I’d like to discuss a bit about how to move forward with building and executing an inbound marketing strategy.
At the Core is Your Website
You already know that the internet is a terrific playing field. It’s the great leveler in that any business can have a web presence and in many cases the internet reader would never know whether a business is a mom and pop shop or a million dollar company in a penthouse suite downtown. Any business can and should have a good-looking, easy to navigate website that appeals to its target market. This website becomes the base for your inbound marketing strategy.
Reaching Your Audience
Of course, you need to decide how you will provide information to your target market. Blogging or regular article posts should be a given. If you don’t have a blogging platform built into your website, you should have that added. Then you can schedule your posts. Will they be weekly? Daily? You want consistency and timeliness. So you should establish a schedule that you know you can keep.
Creating Content
Then you need to create a list of blog topics. What kind of information do you want to provide? Think about what is relevant to your target market. What will they want to read? What will establish you as the expert?
Not a writer? Not to worry. You have several options. Look to someone within your company or perhaps a trusted colleague. You can also look into ghostwriters to write the content for you. You want someone to write for your company with a voice that fits. Not everyone is a wordsmith. And that’s okay. An outsider can write in your voice and your posts will still be relevant and authentic.
It’s tempting to buy a bunch of articles that are touted to be laden with key words and optimized for the search engines. But these articles can be found all over the net. And you’ll lose your authenticity if the internet reader figures out that your information is not yours.
The Multi-Channel Marketing Approach
Start thinking about how you can provide information that utilizes other mediums. How about some audio files that are chock full of tips? Or what about getting a guest spot on an internet radio show? An audio question and answer session can be provided as a downloadable link on your website or posted on your social media profiles. (Learn more about inbound marketing tools and techniques such as social media platforms here.)
Humanize Your Brand
Don’t forget that amidst all this information dissemination, you need to portray your business personality. It’s okay to have a post that isn’t all business. Want to post a shout out to a customer? Do it. Want to whip up a quick video clip showing a couple minutes of your employees hard at work? These sorts of things make you only that much more real to your target market. And it can give you a definite edge. So as you implement your inbound marketing plans, don’t forget to show your target market a bit of personality here and there.
As marketers look for ways to do more with less, email continues to be a channel that can be very beneficial. It costs less than other forms of traditional media, and it provides a fairly consistent open rate for most companies.
However, it is still very important for marketers to actively try to increase the success that they do get from their email efforts.
How Video Can Improve Open Rates
The folks at MediaPost recently ran a summary of an Experian report on email efforts.
If you have a moment, it’s definitely worth reading.
I don’t want to steal too much of their thunder, but here were two of the big highlights:
- When marketers used the word “video” in an email subject line, Open Rates nearly doubled
- Including video in an email drove conversion rates higher by 21% on average
Click here to read the full MediaPost article >>
I just wanted to take a quick moment to share a great example of online marketing by my friends at Rescigno’s Marketing Connections.
Over the years, I’ve had the chance to work with them on a number of projects. In fact, I am quite happy that they are listed on our Portfolio page!
They’ve done something recently with online video that also really impressed me.
Video and Direct Mail
Rescigno’s provides a wide variety of marketing services to their audience. This includes direct mail and printing, among others.
In an effort to educate prospects and customers about their capabilities, and to increase awareness of their services in general, the Rescigno’s have launched a video series titled “Do’s & Don’ts of Direct Mail“.
Here is the first video in their series:
I think that this video does a great job of helping to achieve some of the Rescigno’s main business objectives. Also, as a marketing services provider, it is absolutely vital that they should be using newer marketing channels to promote their services!
I also loved how they’ve used video to simplify and explain a very important technology: variable data printing! They not only demonstrate what that really means, but they also share the benefits that their customers could receive if they utilized Rescigno’s services in that area.
My hat’s off to the Rescigno’s, once again! Great job, Ron and Sue!
Every business dreams of those “easy” sales. The sales where customers virtually fall into your lap. Don’t we all want to find that customer who nods at everything we say, knowing that we are the experts and the best solution to their needs? The reality is you likely work hard for every customer you get to that point of the sale. But what if that hard work really involved laying the ground work so that over time, those customers really do fall into your lap?
With inbound marketing, you can lay that groundwork to establish your business as a resource, as a wealth of information and the right solution to your target market’s needs. And while it takes some work, it does not require the outlay of cash that many other marketing strategies take, such as massive ad campaigns.
In traditional marketing, you send your message out to the masses. And hopefully, it gets to your target market and that target market responds. With inbound marketing, you are still sending a message out, but it’s less intrusive and much more authentic. Think about it: when you go to a party, do you want to seek out all the cool kids and chat them up, hoping they will like you? Or would you like to be the cool kid and have everyone come to you?
Attracting Leads to Your Business
By providing relevant and interesting content, you become the cool kid. Your target market wants to get to know you. They want to read your articles. They want to download your audio tips. They want to watch your video clips. As you develop your content and make it accessible in various formats, you get your name and expertise in front of your target market in various ways.
Or course, you do have to make sure your content is optimized for the search engines. You want your informational pieces to be found via free searches. This doesn’t mean you stuff your content with fluff and keywords over and over again. In fact, doing so will turn a potential customer off. You have to find the right balance between using those keywords while providing relevant and readable information.
How Social Media Fits In
Inbound marketing also embraces the use of social media to get noticed. You should be sharing your information across multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on. Your target market isn’t going to be hanging out in one place. They’re laughing at the latest tweet. Checking out the most recent status update. Sharing that video clip. By establishing your business identity via several social media platforms, you get the chance to seize the interest of many more potential customers, and continue to establish your business as a resource. Another benefit is the ability to interact with those in your target market on a more personal level. Social media invites dialogue and interaction. By being responsive as well as proactive with your information dissemination, you are becoming the friendly resource that your target market wants to work with.
Inbound marketing isn’t for the lazy business. It takes time. It takes knowledge. It takes dedication. You need to provide good, quality content. You need to be search engine friendly and keyword wise. And you need to establish your business identity across multiple social media platforms. But in the long run, inbound marketing can take your business sales to a whole other level.
Would you like to learn how inbound marketing can help you grow your business? Well, I’d like to encourage you to attend the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference in August.
This conference is being hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals of Washington DC Metro Area Chapter (AFP DC) and the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW).
On August 8th, I will be speaking on the subject of “How Inbound Marketing Can Work for You”. I took a quick moment to record this preview video below:
I’m quite excited to share news that I’ll be speaking at Content Marketing World 2012! Here is an article that I’ve written to tease my presentation.
I love marketing.
As a result, I often get excited about new channels and technologies that appear. Over the past few years, this has included such things as QR Codes, Near Field Communication (NFC), and of course various social networks. Perhaps you also have the tendency to get excited about new channels and opportunities that arise!
However, one of the biggest things that I’ve learned throughout my business career has been this — you can never rely solely on one channel to get the job done! No matter how buzz a channel or technology may come up, the best way to effectively reach your audience is through an integrated, multi-channel effort.
In today’s world, it may seem harder than ever to stand out and get noticed. But during my presentation at Content Marketing World, titled “Expand the Reach of Your Story with Multi-Channel Marketing”, I will demonstrate how you can effectively use a mix of traditional and newer marketing channels to tell your brand’s story more effectively than ever before!
I hope to see you there!
In the meantime, I’d love to connect with you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or Pinterest!
I am excited to share the news that I’ll be speaking at the ON DEMAND Expo on June 14th in New York!
I will be talking about a topic that I am quite passionate about: “Growing Your Business With Social Media”.
But what has made me more excited than usual about this presentation is that I will have a very special co-presenter.
Ladies and Gentleman, Meet My Co-Presenter
Donna Vieira, the Director of Marketing and Communications at Curley Direct, will be speaking with me on this very important topic.
You will not want to miss out on the insight that Donna will share with attendees! She has a lot of experience in a variety of marketing channels, and she has absolutely had success with various social networks.
If you will be in New York for ON DEMAND, we would love to see you there!
Presentation Overview
Title: Growing Your Business With Social Media
Description: In this session, hear how companies can grow their business through online marketing initiatives, including strategies, plans and tactics for incorporating social media into multi-channel marketing campaigns.
- Understand how your target audience communicates in the various channels and how getting noticed is most important.
- Learn how to drive traffic from your marketing campaigns and how lead generation is done in a multi-channel effort.
- Learn from real examples and case studies on how to blend traditional marketing methods with online channels.
- You will take away immediate actionable ideas for your business — for your website, social media channels, email campaigns, and more.
- Learn best practices for social networking, SEO, and website design.
Learn more at the ON DEMAND website today >>
Our CEO John Foley, Jr. will be speaking at the 2012 PostNet Thrive Conference on April 19th, 2012.
John will provide an overview of the changing media landscape, and provide ways for printers to still grow their business.
He also took a moment to film this video about his presentation:
We are absolutely thrilled that our company will have role in this event. The folks at PostNet have been taking some great steps to help ensure their franchisees can succeed now and into the future.
John’s presentation continue that pattern. It will contain strategies, plans, and tactics to help printers find even more ways to thrive in this changing world of marketing and communications.
If you will at the conference, make sure to say Hi to John.
If not, you can follow along via the #MileHiThrive hashtag on Twitter!
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to return to my alma mater, Curry College to speak to the Continuing Ed. Marketing class and the M.B.A. Public Relations class with Professors Bob MacNeil and Tony Fabrizio, as well as Curry’s Director of the M.B.A. program William Topper .
The group of 26 attentive students were terrific as I spoke with them about the origins of Grow Socially, our client and fan base, as well as what business practices we use and how it relates to their current courses. We spoke at length about what clients want to get out of the social media marketing efforts, and why an increasing amount of companies are outsourcing these services in 2012.
They asked some great questions and had a tremendous amount of feedback about how social media marketing has influenced them not just as marketing students, but as consumers as well. It was a rewarding experience for me to be able to share some stories and facts with Curry students as well as see some familiar faces.
I’d like to thank everyone at Curry for having me back and look forward to possibly returning to the Milton, MA campus again in the near future!
…….Also thanks for this awesome mug!
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