Social Media Marketing - Using Instagram to Engage Customers
Studies show that as of October 2011 there were 95.8 million smartphone users in the US alone. Studies also show that more and more people are spending time online on their smart phones rather than their computers. The trend shows that more people are preferring to use their smart phones for what they once used their computers for. What does this mean? Well as marketers, you need to make sure that you’re connecting with your clients customers in the areas where they are spending their time.
What’s an extremely visual and fun way to do this? Instagram.
For those who may be unfamiliar, Instagram is an app for iPhone users that allows them to take pictures and transform them into instant works of art. This app features 16 vintage filters for users to chose from, and once finished, the user can then upload their image to any social network.
What the app can do for users doesn’t stop there. With some creativity businesses, brands and marketers can use the app to engage with existing and potential customers. And the best part of all - its totally free.
Through Instagram, brands and marketers can:
1. Create a Unique Industry View
Businesses can uniquely position themselves in their market by using this photo sharing app. It will shape their position in the market place with an edge.
2. Create a Unique Visual Sense for Themselves
Through the images a business uploads, they will be displaying what makes them unique and they can further flex their creative muscles. You can display your passion for your product to others
3. Engage Customers with a Story
For as long as cameras have been around, the photos we take are used for the purpose of story telling. Seeing as more and more people are utilizing smart phones and the apps that are available to them, it only seems fitting to go where the people are going. Companies such as Starbucks and Red Bull do a great job of brand story telling through the app.
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Here, you can see how both display visually interesting photos. These brands use their uploaded images to further solidify their identities. It’s definitely a great way to elevate their presence in their respective markets.
4. Capture Exclusive and Interesting Brand Images
Brands can capture insider information for their customers through the photos they take. This will give existing customers a reason to stick around as they are constantly being engaged with their beloved brand. By providing exclusive brand images you can also entice potential customers to further check out what you’re all about.
Some think that using Instagram for any marketing purposes devalues what the app was intended for. Personally, I love seeing the exclusive images that you just wouldn’t find on any website. I think it’s a great way to ensure you’re connecting with customers in the areas they are spending their time. It’s just a little something extra that when done correctly, can add value to your social media marketing.
Thoughts/Comments? Leave them below or Tweet us @brunelloinc!
5 on Page SEO Tips. Simple, yet Effective.
On page SEO is the process in which you optimize the content on your site through various steps. Proper on page SEO includes the usage of text, images and links. Here we provide you with 5 simple but effective ways in which you can optimize your on page SEO!
1. Add Title, Keywords and Meta Descriptions.
- Keywords exist in content and internal text links.
- Use Keywords in: Title tags which are short descriptions of what a user can expect to find on a page. Most important keywords should be located to left to right and be within the first 8-10 words of title and of post.
- Meta description should be a 20-25 word elaboration including 1-2 of your keyword phrases. Here’s a tool to help you come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html.
2. Build your Social Media Community
- Listen to and acknowledge your audience/community.
- Equip followers with information tailored to your business. Leave out hard selling them on a product or service through social media.
- You’ll come to learn that the ROI of the community is actually extremely valuable. With the right amount of nurturing your community will aid in several parts of the sales cycle: lead generation, post-sale education and support.
- Make sure to utilize a sharebar. Make customizations for your audience so that they have an easy way to share your content via social media.
Don’t miss out on how you can optimize your social media marketing tactics!
3. Internal Linking of Blog Posts
- Internal linking plays an important role in on page SEO. You can achieve this in two ways:- Linking some keywords within the blog post to other relevant blog posts (Refer to tip number two for an example of how we did this!)- Include links to related articles within a particular keyword theme or phrase in your posts.
4. Create Unique Content
- Make sure content on all your pages is unique. You also want to be sure that the content you create is sharable and that others will instantly want to tweet, share, or link to it. You can ensure content is unique by going through a duplicate content removal process….which brings us to #5…
5. Remove Duplicate Content
- Remove all duplicate content on your WordPress blog for SEO. You can download the All in One SEO pack for wordpress here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/. Duplicate content will be penalized by Google spiders that crawl your site!
By implementing even just one of these points you will better your on page SEO strategy and results!
How to Tune Up your Social Media Accounts
It can be safe to say that a great deal of time went into the creation and implementation of your businesses social media accounts. Even more time has probably been spent monitoring your efforts, outreaching new and potential clients, and creating new content each day. You may be thinking that you’ve done all you can for your accounts and you may think they have gotten a little stale. Here we’ll provide you with a few ways in which you can tune up your social media accounts and give them a breath of fresh air.
Facebook:
1. Keep your Facebook Business Page inviting - put time into creating an engaging environment for your fans.
2. Go through apps. Clean out the unused and determine which apps and activities would best supplement your brand. What worked in 2008 may no longer be relevant.
3. Browse through your page as if you were your own customer. Take down anything you wouldn’t want to see on your favorite companies site.
Twitter:
1. Accurately Fill out Bio and use non-diminutive words such as “expert” or “guru”.
2. Make sure you’ve established a casual atmosphere on your Twitter account. Delete any tweets that aren’t personable or informal.
3. Tweet links to your landing pages, blog posts and start promoting new tools and apps.
For both Twitter and Facebook, look to see what you have done and find something you haven’t already tried. Switch up the look of your Facebook page by making new custom tabs. Make sure your Twitter bio is still accurate and unfollow any irrelevant Tweeple!
Questions or comments? Leave them here or you can connect with us via twitter @BrunelloInc!
Call to Action Buttons - Tips and Examples
A call to action is a term used in the industry to entice a visitor on your site to perform something specific. The most common calls to action on webpages are in the form of clickable buttons. When the visitor clicks these buttons a predefined action takes place.
The most effective all to action buttons grab the visitors attention via design and text. Don’t overly design the button. Often times colors such as green and orange are used in the design of CTA buttons. They evoke a certain click now and “go ahead” feel to the button. Many times when there is a free sign up or free download the button will be green. When it’s an “Add to Shopping Cart” or “Try it Now” button, you’ll tend to see the usage of orange. Also its important to use a language the visitor will understand. The context should be concise and clear on what action the visitor will be taking once they click the button. Here are few examples of some CTA Buttons with simple design and text:
An important part of designing CTA buttons that also goes along with the language of the button, is to consider what you’re offering the visitor. Some good examples of how to phrase CTA buttons are:
Consistency in design is important all around, even with call to action buttons. Make sure you’re always placing the button in the same spot of a page if it appears on more than one page. When ordering a product on Amazon.com, no matter what the item is, the shopping cart call to action button always appears in the same spot.
Here’s an example:
When designing your call to action buttons for your site it’s good to keep in mind a few things: the language, design, and consistency of your buttons!
4 Reasons your Google Rank Appears to Change on the Results Page
You’re doing a little SEO research and you search for your own website on Google. On this day your site is sitting happily at the #1 spot. You check in a few weeks later, preforming the same exact search and yet, your site rank has dropped a few spots! Your head starts spinning and you don’t understand why this has happened. You haven’t made any changes to your site from when you last searched, and yet your pagerank has dropped. This occurrence can be summed up in 4 reasons:
1. +/- of Linked Pages: If the number of sites linking to your own site changes, this will factor in determining what sites are indexed by Google. Should the number go down, you can assume the same will happen to your page rank. Think of sites linking to your own as a vote. The more votes you get, the better!
2. Google Personalization. ( http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048) Google watches what you click on in the search results page. From this, Google is learning what your site preferences are. For example, if you preform several searches, with almost all ending with a click on a search result from ebay, Google learns or assumes that you really like ebay. This gives ebay a boost in ranks and you’ll start seeing more listings from ebay. This will hold true to the search results of your site.
If you prefer to, you can turn off Google’s personalization feature. Here’s how: http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2410479. This will help in yielding results that aren’t based on personal content.
3. Data Center Accessed: Google uses thousands upon thousands of data centers and the data center you accessed today will probably be different than the one you accessed yesterday. This is due to load balancing efforts.
4. Localization: Say you happen to be accessing the same data center as someone who lives 4 states away from you, your search results could STILL vary from this persons results due to localization. This is Google trying to further “personalize” your search results.
And with Google page ranks, and general SEO, you should always keep in mind these two things:
- Frequency of Keywords: If a keyword only appears once on a page, it will receive a low score.
- Number of sites that link to the page: Google determines relevance of a site based on how many web pages are linked to the page in question.
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