This is something you can do before you list your business for sale, but if you’ve already started the process it’s not too late. However, you’ll need to do the work yourself; it’s not something you can outsource. Even if you’ve hired a professional mergers and acquisitions broker to help you sell your business, only you can strengthen your social media presence.

It’s not that you can’t sell your business without having an active presence on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Many business owners don’t have any social media accounts and it doesn’t hinder their ability to sell the business. What you don’t want is a weak or negative social media presence.

If there’s anything weak or negative about your business’ presence on social media, it’s important to resolve these issues to the best of your ability before putting your business on the market. Here’s why.

1. Buyers don’t want to inherit dissatisfied customers

If you have a negative reputation on social media, or if your followers express their dissatisfaction and frustration with your company online, buyers might not want to deal with having to turn all of that around. Granted, if your business has potential, they might not hesitate, especially if they already know how to win over a crowd of dissatisfied customers. However, don’t count on that. Many buyers want to acquire a business that doesn’t have customer issues.

The potential for buyers becoming disinterested is the number one reason to fix your brand image on social media before you sell your business. If your reputation is poor, whether or not you feel like it’s fair, start actively repairing your reputation.

Reputation management should be a standard part of your business practices, but if it’s not, get started right away. Find the source of the problem and make it right. You might need to hire a team to help implement a successful strategy, and it’s worth taking an expert’s advice.

2. Happy social media followers are easier to sell

It’s cheaper to sell to existing customers than it is to generate new, one-off sales. If your followers are upset with your business, they’re less likely to buy from you, no matter who buys your business. They won’t know any better.

To maximize sales, you need to nurture your existing customers so they feel valued and appreciated. The value of a returning customer increases over time, and since you’ve already made the effort to capture them once, you don’t have to do that again. All you need to do is market your products and services to them through email, most of which can be automated.

It’s also easier to generate sales from people who are already familiar with your brand. This is where remarketing comes into play. However, remarketing will only work when your customers and fans have a positive image of your brand. If you have a poor reputation, the new business owner won’t be able to employ this strategy, which will severely limit their ability to make the business profitable.

3. Happy customers will do what you ask

While you can’t win everyone over all the time, many of your customers will do what you ask if they feel fondly about your business. For example, if you ask your Facebook followers to sign up for a new newsletter, you’ll get plenty of signups from people who feel positively about your brand. If you ask for this with a poor reputation, your request will be ignored.

When selling your business with a negative social media presence, the new owner will meet some serious challenges in marketing the business. You could have thirty thousand followers, but if they don’t love you, they won’t buy from you. This will become the new owner’s problem.

How’s your social media presence?

No matter how in-demand your business may be, you’ll have an easier time selling your business if you have a strong social media presence. Potential buyers won’t like having to repair the brand’s reputation and build a new customer base to be profitable. It’s easier for them to buy a different business that won’t require so much work. If you want to sell your business, a positive social media presence is a must.

The post Why You Need a Strong Social Media Presence to Sell Your Business appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The U.S. is, by far, the largest social media ad market worldwide. However, that doesn’t mean that marketers in other nations aren’t taking advantage of social media platforms as well.

But here’s the thing. Even the most tech-savvy companies with marketing departments staffed with whip-smart people typically make some common mistakes. The problem? You don’t want to waste your marketing budget by making easily avoidable blunders.

Keep reading to learn about three social media marketing mistakes you might be making. You’ll also learn what to change to make the most of your social media marketing efforts.

Mistake #1: Failing to Plan

One of the worst things you can do is launch a social media marketing campaign without adequate planning and preparation. The old saying that failing to plan is like planning to fail rings true even in the digital age. It might seem obvious to devise a strategy, but many companies fail on this crucial point. If you don’t have a plan, you might be throwing good money after bad.

When planning, write down specific objectives you want to accomplish, how you plan to get there, how long the campaign will last, and how much money is needed for the campaign. It’s also important that you figure out how to measure the results of your marketing campaign. How else will you know whether or not it was successful or if you need to pivot mid-campaign?

Mistake #2: Failing to Define Target Market

Another common social media marketing mistake that many businesses make is failing to define their target markets properly. Different strategies will work better with different target demographics. So, before you earmark a single dollar for your campaign, figure out your target audience. That’s the only way you can put together a strategy that makes a significant impact.

When you take the time to define your target demographic, you’ll also be able to choose the social media platforms that will best align with your objectives. There are tons of social media sites, and more are popping up every day. But some social media platforms appeal to some demographics more than others. Knowing your audience will help you select the right platforms.

Mistake #3: Failing to Track Analytics

If you’re going to launch a social media marketing campaign, you need to track analytics. As mentioned above, tracking this information is how you can assess performance. If you’re going to dedicate funds to digital marketing, you’ll want to know the following:

• Who is responding?
• Which ads are people clicking on or engaging with?
• How long are people staying on specific pages?

What can be measured should be measured. Your company can draw on the data extracted from the analytics to fine-tune your social media marketing efforts. What you do with the analytics can make or break your social media marketing strategy.

One thing to consider is the importance of having an effective website to direct people back to. Failing to have a professional website that scores high on aesthetics, layout, loading speed, and other important factors will limit the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. It’s one reason to consider retaining the services of a web design agency.

Outsourcing is important when you don’t have the in-house talent. You might also need the services that a custom software development company offers.

These are just a few examples of some of the most prevalent social media marketing mistakes that many businesses–big, large, and in between–typically make. Since you don’t want to jeopardize your marketing efforts, you’ll want to avoid these and other mistakes.

You’ll then be able to leverage the power of social media to effectively and efficiently market your company.

The post 3 Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Need to Correct appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

What is an Explainer Video?

An explainer video is basically a modern day elevator pitch in video form. It explains what your product or service does and why people should care. The best ones are concise, catchy, and make people pay attention. They not only explain the value you provide, but they also position your brand in a unique light.

As WordStream mentions, “These types of videos have become extremely popular – some sites boast of conversion rates increasing by as much as 144% after including an explainer video on their website.”

In addition to featuring them on websites, explainer videos work well on social media, advertisements, landing pages, and even as standalone YouTube videos. In fact, it’s this versatility that makes these videos so effective. They allow you to simplify complex concepts and create powerful content that sells without coming across as salesy.

Tips for Creating Effective Explainer Videos

No two explainer videos are identical. You can move in any number of directions. Having said that, the following tips will streamline the process and allow you to develop a high-quality video in less time and for less money.

1. Decide on a Style

There are a variety of different types of explainer videos. You’ll have to decide which style you want. There are live-action explainer videos where you have real people holding or using the physical product. (The classic Dollar Shave Club and PooPourri videos are good examples of this style.) Then there are animated explainer videos where you’re able to explain the product or service using creative graphics and designs. Finally, you have whiteboard explainer videos, where the concepts are drawn and erased on digital whiteboards.

Animated and whiteboard explainer videos, which often merge together, are definitely the most popular and cost-effective to produce. You can even outsource the entire thing to a company like Piehole.TV and never have to touch a thing.

2. Start With the End in Mind…

The best piece of advice is to begin with the end of the video in mind. Think about what your main takeaway or call-to-action is and then work backwards.

If the goal of the video is to get them to sign up for a free trial of your software, then the rest of your video needs to give them a reason to try it. If the goal is to make a quick sale, then the video needs to be emotional and integrate some element of urgency to get them to act right away.

3. …But Nail the Beginning

While you have to begin the planning process with the end of the video in mind, you have to absolutely ace the first three seconds. In fact, research shows that 65 percent of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for at least 10 seconds, while nearly half will watch for 30 seconds. And if you can get someone hooked into the first 30 seconds, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll watch for the duration of the video.

There’s no room for long intros or drawn-out boilerplate-type content. Get to the good stuff immediately and people will be more likely to watch your video.

4. Use This Simple Script

Simplicity is at the heart of creating effective explainer videos. And if you want to make your videos effective, they must be digestible. This means stripping away all of the superfluous details and focusing on a four-part script:

• The problem
• The solution
• How the product works
• Call to action

That’s it! Start by highlighting the problem the customer has, present your product as the solution, explain how the product works, and then call them to take a specific action.

Create Your First Explainer Video

Creating an explainer video doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might think. It’s actually pretty straightforward. And if you work with professional explainer video makers, you can literally hand the project off and have it completed for you.

Test it out with your business and see what you think. You’ll be amazed by the versatility it gives you on the marketing and promotion side of your operations.

The post How to Create an Explainer Video That Wows People appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

3 Content Management Tips for Success

Anyone can zoom out, look at the big picture of content creation and publishing, and easily see that content management must be strategic. But the success is often in the details. Day-to-day content management has to be strategic, too. In other words, it has to be carefully documented, intentionally executed, and carefully aligned with the overall content strategy.

Research from Content Marketing Institute shows 78 percent of organizations take a strategic approach to content management. And those who don’t? Roughly 63 percent of them blame it on a lack of processes.

The point is clear: If you want to take a more strategic approach to content management as a social media marketer, you need to get organized and develop processes that put you in a position to be more successful.

Here are several tips:

1. Get Organized

Organization and systematization are at the heart of good content management. But with the velocity and volume of content that your business creates, it’s not an easy task. Thus, it’s imperative for you to figure out a way to wrap your arms around all of your content so that you can focus on all of the important aspects of executing.

One important step you can take is running regular content audits to keep detailed inventory of each piece of content you have in your organization. Content should be inventoried, organized, and clearly tagged within your system so that you can measure the effectiveness of each aspect of your content strategy.

It’s also smart to map out content as it aligns with the different stages in the customer journey. This ensures your content team isn’t just randomly producing content and throwing it against the wall to see what sticks. Instead, they can create intentional pieces of content that tie back to the end goal for each buyer persona.

Finally, work with your content creation team to develop a specific editorial calendar with all key dates of production, publication, and promotion.

2. Have a Plan for Unstructured Content

In the IT world, you’ll hear professionals discuss data in terms of “structured” and “unstructured.” And in the world of content, we also have structured and unstructured content.

Structured content is anything that can fit into a spreadsheet and has a URL attached to it. This is content that you can easily organize and track the analytics around. Unstructured content is all of the other content that doesn’t fit into columns and rows. This includes presentations, internal documents, PDFs, audio files, and even some video content.

In order to win with content management, you must have a plan for all content – including the unstructured variety. (IDC predicts 80 percent of all data and content will be unstructured within the next three years.)

The best way to organize your unstructured content alongside your structured content is to use a content management platform like Box. This allows you to proactively organize and ensure compliance over all content (structured or otherwise). And because it’s all organized in one platform, you never have to chase anything down.

3. Include the Entire Team

The biggest mistake social media marketers make with content management is operating in a silo. If you want your content management strategy to be effective, you have to include the entire team. This means gathering input from content creators, folks who run the paid advertising campaigns, the website developers, senior leadership, etc. You don’t have to act on every bit of feedback they give you, but you should at least take their pulse and consider their thoughts.

Master Content Management

In order to master content management as a social media marketer, you have to approach it from a strategic point of view. The creativity, glitz, and glam of content can be left to the creators – it’s your job to keep things organized, systematic, and secure.

And while the creators might get more of the praise and attention, you’re the one keeping the engine humming.

The post 3 Content Management Tips for Social Media Marketers appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

While digital marketing has certainly paved the way for greater reach and more cost-effective engagement – something that’s critically important for small businesses with limited budgets – there’s still one big challenge: integration. More specifically, small businesses must learn how to properly integrate different digital marketing services for a cohesive and consistent message.

What is Integrated Digital Marketing?

Integrated digital marketing is precisely what it sounds like. It’s the process of blending multiple digital marketing services into a single strategy that allows a business to intentionally deliver the right message to the right audience using the best mediums and platforms for the job.

Though every integrated digital marketing strategy looks slightly different, it typically includes elements like web development and design, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, video production, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, etc.

Tips for Flawlessly Integrating Digital Marketing

The biggest challenge of integrating digital marketing is figuring out what to focus on. With so many different moving parts (and a limited budget), it’s tricky to always know how to proceed. But at the end of the day, the goal is to keep things focused and consistent. If you can do these two things, success won’t be far away. Here are some additional tips:

1. Get Clear on Your Brand

It doesn’t matter if it’s traditional offline marketing or digital marketing; you can’t be effective with digital marketing if you don’t have a clear identity. Everything starts with this foundation. You need to get clear on your mission, values, and goals. And we’re not talking about stale corporate boilerplate information about changing the world one widget at a time. We’re talking about a tangible expression of what you want for your customers. In other words, what dream are you trying to help them achieve?

2. Create Detailed Personas

It always starts with your brand. But once you have the bedrock of your brand figured out, it’s time to quickly shift gears and start thinking about your audience, who they are, and what they want. This is best done through the creation of detailed personas.

A detailed customer persona digs into the demographics, hopes, dreams, expectations, and preferences of your audience. The average brand will have three to five different personas. And while there will be some overlap between them, each effectively operates independently. The goal of an integrated marketing plan is to utilize strategies that allow you to reach each without compromising on brand consistency.

3. Choose Your Services

With so many different digital marketing services, it’s impossible to do everything at once. The best approach is to choose a few of the services that you believe will generate the best ROI and then go from there.

If you’ve done a good job of mapping out your brand and creating detailed personas, it’s a lot easier to choose which services to integrate. For example, if your audience is 55-plus, you’re probably not very focused on TikTok as part of a social strategy. Facebook, on the other hand, will work well.

4. Measure and Optimize

You can’t take a set-it-and-forget-it approach to integrated digital marketing. It doesn’t work like that. Digital marketing is dynamic – constantly evolving and iterating as the months pass. You must be willing to do the same.

The key is to track and measure each element of your marketing strategy using robust analytics and key performance indicators. Based on the analysis of this data, you can continually optimize your approach – sticking with what’s working and ditching that which doesn’t.

Adding it All Up

Digital marketing is the way of the present and of the future. But if you’re going to excel in this arena, you have to figure out how to integrate the right services, while blocking out any noise that doesn’t help you move the proverbial needle for your brand.

Once you reach this sort of clarity, results are the natural byproduct.

The post How to Properly Integrate Different Digital Marketing Services appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

5 Tips for Getting People to Click On and Read Your Content

If you’re going to take the time to write quality content, you might as well go the extra mile to make it magnetic and engaging. Here are several valuable tips that top copywriters and content marketers use to get people clicking and reading:

1. Choose the Right Topics

To start with, you need to select topics that your readers care about. In other words, if your blog’s readers are millennial males between the ages of 28 and 31, you probably don’t want to write about sewing or wedding planning. You’d choose topics that are most likely to invigorate your readership.

Choosing the right topics is as simple as finding out what your audience is already searching for. If you already know who your target demographic is, you can simply plug this information into keyword search tools and see what people are searching for and reading. You can then adapt your own content strategy to mirror these desires.

2. Make it Discoverable

You know the old question that goes, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, that same question could be asked of content. If content is published but nobody is around to read it, is it even content?

To generate a positive ROI on your content marketing efforts, you have to make your content searchable. We recommend hiring a local SEO agency. For example, if your business is in Long Island, you’d hire a Long Island SEO professional. This ensures you’re working with people who understand your specific market.

3. Write Better Headlines

Your headline is basically the curb appeal for your content. If it’s boring and dingy, nobody will click. If, on the other hand, it’s exciting and relevant, people will rush to see what it’s all about.

The headline shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should command at least 25 percent of the total time it takes to create the content.

Good headlines are unique, ultra-specific, urgent, and useful. You should use numbers and data points whenever possible. Replace boring adjectives with emotional words and verbs. Play to people’s senses!

4. Keep it Skimmable

Somebody might click on your blog post or article, but they aren’t going to read it if they find it intimidating. Your content needs to be skimmable.

Skimmable content is breathable content. Rather than having large, chunky paragraphs, it features short sentences, bullet points, bolded words, italicized, and numbered lists.

According to a web usability test by Nielsen, 79 percent of internet users skim content instead of reading word-for-word. By organizing your content into a skimmable format, you increase the chances that someone will engage with your content and absorb the most valuable information.

5. Include Visuals

The human brain processes visuals much differently than written text. In fact, it’s common knowledge in the brain science community that as much as 50 percent of the human brain is wired to receive visual input. And it takes just 1/10th of a second for someone to understand a visual scene, as opposed to several seconds to grasp what’s going on in a written description.

With that being said, visuals are a must-have in your content. Whether it’s videos, images, graphs, charts, or infographics, the presence of compelling visuals makes your content more engaging and memorable. Make this a big priority for your content strategy moving forward!

Put Your Content to Good Use

It takes a long time to write good content, whether it gets read or not. So you might as well do what it takes to develop compelling content that satiates your audience’s wants, needs, and desires. Let this article serve as a starting point. Once you find something that works, continue to iterate until you zero in on the best possible “recipe” for your brand and readership.

The post How to Get People to Actually Read Your Content appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

There are clearly a number of problems at play in this situation, many of which can’t be solved by individuals, but that’s not much of a comfort if you’re looking for a role you’ll actually want to stick with for more than a year or two.

So, while you’re stuck with current economic conditions, one thing you can do to boost your odds of getting hired is to develop high-value skills, and do so without going back to school and taking on tens of thousands more in student debt.

Soft Skill: Sales

While a lot of traditional, local sales jobs – think, the neighborhood insurance broker or even old-school door-to-door sales – have gone the way of the dodo, sales is still the heart of every business. If you’re not closing sales, you’re not turning a profit.

Look for opportunities to learn more about how to develop leads and close sales and includes those skills on your resume. Even though there are a lot of true entry-level jobs that can help hone this skill, many white-collar managers will weigh this kind of sales training more heavily than someone who learned to close a sale while working at Home Depot.

Identity: Find Your Niche

Older generations may mock the millennial and Gen Z impulse to create a personal brand, but realistically, this is just part of living in the social media age, and you may as well use it to your advantage.

Find a niche where you can build a more extensive skillset, start a blog, and identify yourself with a particular specialization. In the past, professionals built this kind of identity on the basis of the roles they were assigned or projects they handled, but as you can learn more about here, this kind of independent personal branding can actually help you tackle both traditional job interviews and entrepreneurship. Your personal brand is the launchpad for whatever type of life you want to build.

Hard Skills: Tech Expertise

Among the most in-demand hard skills in businesses today are those under the tech heading, and we don’t just mean being better at using GSuite and Slack than older coworkers. No, companies are desperately in need of professionals who know their way around mobile app development, audio and video production, and artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity has also been struggling with a sizable skills gap, and professionals with these competencies can essentially write their own ticket.

Mindset: Flexibility And Freedom

While you may not be able to put these on your resume, if you’re going to thrive, or at least survive, the current job market, you’re going to need to stay flexible and be okay with being your own boss, even when you don’t want to.

This is one of the major pressures of contemporary work: as popular as entrepreneurship is among a subset of young professionals, there are a lot of millennials who don’t want to be their own bosses. They know what happens when your whole life is devoted to the hustle, and they don’t want it.

Accepting work as a contractor, freelancer, or even temporary entrepreneur may be the cost of building your professional brand and a resume that attracts employers. And, until then, stay focused and ignore all of the advice you’ll surely receive that fails to reflect the current job market.

It may be meant helpfully, but the times have changed, and it’s important that your professional development efforts reflect that. Knowing how to create a perfect resume is more important than ever for the online job seeker.

The post Your Resume Today: 3 In Demand Skills appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

4 Pain-Reducing Tactics That Work

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, millions of American workers found themselves working from home for the first time. And while some have returned to the office, many are continuing to work from home indefinitely. In fact, the work from home movement (which was already well underway prior to 2020) is expected to continue growing over the next decade.

For all of the benefits that working from home offers, the reality is that most people aren’t adequately prepared to do so. They were thrown into the situation without much preparation. Unfortunately, this has created a number of issues with focus, productivity, and even physical health.

Most people aren’t accustomed to working out of a home office. As a result, doctors and chiropractors are reporting an abnormally high number of complaints when it comes to back and neck pain.

Sometimes back and neck pain requires surgical intervention or some other form of medical assistance. But in many cases, it’s possible to reduce or eliminate neck pain with a few simple tweaks to your workspace and daily work habits.

With this in mind, here are some suggestions that could help.

Ensure Proper Support

When sitting down in your office chair, you need to ensure your lower back is properly supported. If you’re experiencing pain or discomfort in this region, it’s possible that you aren’t getting the support you need.

The best option is to get a new chair that provides the necessary support. If you need a quick/temporary fix, roll up a sweatshirt or towel into a log shape. Place it in the small of your back between you and the chair. This will force you to sit up straighter, which will lessen the amount of pressure on your lower back.

Change Up Posture

Sitting down for long periods of time is not good for your health. Not only does it hurt circulation and blood flow, but it also puts unnecessary pressure on your back and spinal column.

“Your lumbar discs are subjected to 1.5 to 2 times the force they would be in a standing position,” Dr. Daniel Riew writes. “Also, a lot of people, when they are seated, tend to place their neck in a forward-leaning position with their chin protruding forward. When they stand up and place the monitor at eye level, they are less likely to do that.”

The key to reducing pressure on your back and staying healthy is to frequently change up your posture from sitting to standing. You can do this with a quality standing desk from a company like BTOD.com. Their Facebook page has pictures of different ways customers use standing desks in their home offices.

Take Regular Breaks

When you work in a traditional office, you get more movement than you realize. Simple things like walking from the parking lot to the building or from your office desk to the bathroom/breakroom add up. But when you work from home, you may only get a few hundred steps in all day. That needs to change!

Too much sedentary activity will catch up to you (regardless of whether you’re standing or sitting). Make it a point to take regular breaks throughout the day. If you live in a house, take a walk around the block. If you’re in an apartment, try climbing a few flights of stairs.

Eat Well

Did you know that the food you eat may impact your level of back and neck pain? It’s true! And if you want to beat back pain, you need to optimize your diet to reduce processed foods and increase the number of anti-inflammatory ingredients you put into your body.

For best results, consume a diet that’s high in berries, fatty fish, broccoli, avocados, green tea, peppers, mushrooms, grapes, tomatoes, and cherries.

Move Past Pain

Back and neck pain can be so debilitating that they impact your focus and productivity. Thus if you want to be the most successful version of yourself that you can possibly be, you need to find a way to move past pain and get healthy. Hopefully, this article has given you some useful suggestions!

The post Simple Ways to Reduce Back & Neck Pain When Working From Home appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It will now be geared toward becoming a video entertainment platform to keep up with competitors like TikTok and YouTube.

Regardless of how you feel about this transformation of the app, we’ll all have to abide by the algorithm’s new guidelines to stay relevant and ensure our content continues to be seen by our followers. You might be thinking that video is not your strong suit, and if that’s the case, you aren’t alone.

Numerous online tutorials explain how to become more confident in front of the camera. Posting to your stories and creating reels to add to your content strategy, however, aren’t anything new.

Reels have been around since August 2020, and they won’t be going anywhere, anytime soon. The human attention span has collapsed to become lower than that of a goldfish. We aren’t joking.

The average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. The average human attention span fell from 12 seconds in 2000 to only 8 seconds according to a study reported in July of this year.

Reels are no longer than thirty seconds. The average reel lasts about ten to fifteen seconds. This means you have roughly eight seconds of video content to get your message across to as many viewers as possible.

So you may be asking yourself: How do I manage to create a successful reel? Here are three essential tips to help you make the most out of your Instagram reels.

1. Use Text In Your Videos

Creating reels doesn’t require you to say a single word on camera. You might not even have to appear physically in your reel at all. With the availability of stock video online, you can avoid having to face your fear of being on camera.

An effective alternative is to use text in your videos. For example, say you have a ten-second reel with footage of the ocean waves. You intend to use the reel to provide the seven best tips to get over writer’s block. That’s a lot of benefits to cram into a short amount of time.

This might sound like an impossible task, but because your video is so short, the viewer will have to rewatch it several times over to grab all seven tips. The more views the reel has, the higher the engagement. The higher the engagement, the more people will see your reel.

2. Put More Information in Your Caption

Reels are a great way to become a lead generation source. But how do you get people to sign up for your online course or download your free eBook with a reel? You want to provide a call to action (CTA). Here’s a way to do it.

You’re a yoga instructor that has written an eBook you’re giving away as an incentive to build your email list. The book is all about how to find mindfulness during the daily grind. This is a perfect prompt for your Instagram reel.

Create a short video that simply poses the question, “How do I manage to stay mindful when life is so hectic?” A successful CTA for this example is to have the last piece of text on your video to say, “read the caption to learn how.”

Your caption can provide substantially more detail, which gives you an opportunity to include a CTA. That’s where you can invite people to sign up to receive a free eBook. Congratulations! You’ve now learned how to create a sales funnel through a ten-second reel on Instagram!

3. Partner with Other Influencers

What an influencer has that you might not is simple: more followers in your industry than you do. Influencers offer you a chance to connect with significantly more people around the world.

According to Relevance, the digital marketing and PR firm, influencer marketing’s global reach has grown upwards of 57% as of 2020. This number is only expected to continue rising.

The level of influencer you connect with will determine what compensation they might require. As of now, there are four levels of influencers.

1. Nano Influencers (1k-10k followers)
2. Micro-Influencers (10k-50k followers)
3. Mid-tier Influencers (50k-500k followers)
4. Premium or Macro-Influencers (500k-1 million+ followers)

A nano influencer is still starting to build her following. This means the person may only wish to trade an affiliate link with you that gives them a discount on your services or products.

Someone who is at the mid-tier influencer level is less likely to be satisfied with simply receiving one of your products for free. You’ll have to figure out what your business can afford as an incentive to persuade an influencer at that level to partner with you.

You can go about it a few different ways, but ideally the influencer might create a reel on their Instagram page that showcases your product or service, while also mentioning and tagging your company in the post. That would take some of the heavy lifting off your plate, of having to create the content. You can focus on other aspects of expanding your business.

There are more tips and techniques to leverage your Instagram reels. These are just three to get you started. Do some research, and if you need help, look into working with a social media or digital marketing firm to give you an extra boost of assistance and expertise.

The post Make the Most of Your Instagram Reels with These 3 Tips appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Don’t worry if this is the case! Advertising a property on social media can be quite easy. To leverage social media to its full potential, keep the following tips in mind:

Run Facebook Ads

Unless you’re advertising properties to attract investors instead of buyers or tenants, odds are good your target audience will generally consist of people who live in the area you serve. For example, if you’re advertising a property that’s based in Houston, you won’t necessarily need to market it to people who live in New York City. That would simply be a waste of your time and budget.

This is one reason to consider running ads on social media platforms when advertising properties. Although ads are not a substitute for an active social media presence, they can be a helpful means of optimizing your return on investment.

That’s because social media platforms usually give you the freedom to target an audience based on various factors when running ads. For example, when advertising on Facebook, you have the option to decide which part of the country you want the people who see your ads to be from. This helps you avoid wasting money on ads that are seen by people who live too far from a property to purchase it or become tenants.

Additionally, you can define your audience by other factors that may be important to you, such as age range. After all, if you’re a property manager or real estate agent, it’s highly unlikely any of your customers will be children.

Use Video

In both your ads and social media posts about properties, don’t rely solely on still pictures to highlight them. To truly show off the most attractive elements of your properties in a way that’s dynamic and interesting, incorporate video into your marketing efforts.

The idea that incorporating at least some video ads into a marketing campaign may be more effective than relying solely on ads and posts with still images isn’t merely a theory. There’s strong evidence supporting this notion. Research tends to indicate that video ads generally receive more user engagement than still picture ads on social media. With a video ad, you can also record a voiceover, sharing important information about a property you’re advertising while the video plays.

Answer Questions

Social media is an important marketing channel in virtually all industries because it’s quite unique when compared to other channels. Most types of marketing involve sharing information or content with an audience but not listening or responding to their reactions. Most marketing is a “one-way street” in this regard.

That’s not the case with social media. On social media, you have the ability to have a conversation with your audience. This can increase their sense of connection with your brand.

It can also allow you to address questions or concerns that your customers may have. For instance, perhaps you post on social media about a property you’re marketing, but some potential customers don’t feel your post shares enough information to let them know whether it’s worth visiting said property to learn more.

Luckily, it’s social media. They can simply reply to your initial post with their questions. You can reply back, sharing the information the initial post may have been lacking. This can also provide you with insights that may be valuable when you’re designing posts and ads in the future.

All that said, it’s important to remember that social media marketing is a skill that develops over time. Applying these tips won’t necessarily turn you into an incredible social media marketer overnight. It will, however, help you better understand why social media is such a valuable tool for real estate agents and property managers.

The post 3 Social Media Tips for Property Managers & Real Estate Agents appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The good news is that, with a bit of research and effort, you can develop your company’s social media presence quickly and start engaging with your audience.

How? Let’s take a look.

Start With Only 1 Or 2 Social Media Platforms

The first step is to register your company’s name on the big social media channels, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

But you shouldn’t worry about running all of those channels when you first start. It’s easy to try to do too much too fast. There are so many social medial platforms you can choose from. While you can build your presence on many social media channels over time, it’s often best to choose one or two to start with.

Many experts say that you should start with Facebook because more than half the planet is on there. Also, research shows that almost 70% of users on Facebook like or follow one company brand or more.

Pinterest is an excellent choice for a home improvement company because it’s so visually focused. You can post stunning before and after photos of the windows you install and show customers how much better their home will look with your custom windows, not to mention the energy savings.

Once you have two social media channels up and running and generating feedback for your company, you can expand to the other social media platforms.

Write Your Posts Strategically

You might think social media is entirely random, but there is a science to using it effectively to grow your company.

When you post your content on your social media outlets, you should focus on content that increases awareness of your brand, provides your customers with value, and gives them a call to action.

Create A Content Calendar

It’s easy for a business owner to get slammed by social media because they need to develop a lot of content and don’t know what to do. But if you create a monthly content calendar, you’ll have everything laid out in advance, and you won’t be pounding your head in frustration to think of a catchy Facebook post at the last moment.

Here are some excellent evergreen social media ideas for home improvement and services companies:

• Talk about industry news that clients and prospects care about, such as new tax breaks for installing energy-efficient windows.
• Take pictures of your window installers in clients’ homes and describe the care with which they install your products.
• Provide home improvement tips, even if they are not all about windows.
• Share five-star reviews from customers and thank them.

Social Media Boosts Your Google Ranking

Once you have established your social media presence and provide daily updates about your projects, you’ll notice that it will boost your search engine ranking. Why?

Your site’s domain authority goes up when you have more social media shares, which will slowly increase the rank of your key web pages.

But that’s not all. Many people will check out your social media channels before going to your site to understand what your products and services are all about.

As more people go to your social media platforms, it will bump up your page ranking on social media, and this also nudges your search engine rank higher.

So, marketing on social media doesn’t just engage with customers and prospects – it boosts your visibility in the search engines!

Getting started on social media for company marketing can be intimidating at first, but you will have everything running smoothly in no time with planning and a content calendar.

The post How To Boost Your Home Improvement Company With Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It is important to understand that going online isn’t just about building a digital presence. Unfortunately, 49% of law firms say their most effective marketing strategy is buying web leads.

There is no denying the real business benefits to be had from digital marketing, namely good ROI, better branding, credibility, and more leads than you’ve ever had before.

Read ahead to see what you can do to build a good digital marketing strategy for law firms.

1. Design A Content Marketing Plan

The sheer amount of content produced and consumed daily is a testament to its importance and why marketers from any industry must focus on it.

As a law firm, it is essential to include non-digital collateral in your content marketing plan where physical branding for targeted customers can significantly facilitate a robust digital campaign.

This includes videos, articles, infographics, press releases, and more.

Put this content on your website or social channels to have a unique and highly engaging presence that helps you stand out in your industry against your competitors. A well-thought-out and detailed content plan allows you to schedule your content production, test results and plan when and where to use it.

2. Use Social Media Platforms

Social media is a huge part of our lives, making digital marketing highly relevant and necessary for businesses. It is also a highly dominant advertising tool, requiring you to focus on it.
It would help if you had a detailed understanding of various platforms and how to target potential clients on Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, or Instagram. Then, create content relevant to your niche and present yourself as an authority on the subject matter to persuade your customers and earn their trust through deliverable promises.

3. Website Optimization

Website optimization is necessary to ensure your website ranks as high as possible when clients search for terms linked to your law firm. It is connected to good content, SEO optimization, digital advertising, etc., and continues to attract trackable leads.

Research your field-relevant strings that customers search the most for. Then, create pages with unique content, reciprocal and backlinks, and frequent content relevant to current SEO requirements.

4. Data Analysis

Data analysis forms the core of whatever combination of marketing strategies you use to make changes. Use facts and numbers to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns through A/B testing for content and copy, user response, and ROI.

Since there is a high chance of bias when the marketing developer analyzes the campaign data, it is best to have multiple people do this. You can employ an auditing consultant or third-party marketing agency for data analysis for your law firm.

5. Create A Mobile-Friendly Website

With over 6 billion active smartphone subscriptions worldwide, it is essential to create marketing strategies that ensure mobile friendliness. You have to create an effective mobile layout that caters to the high population that uses smartphones to browse through your website and inquire or book appointments.

Ensure your CTA buttons are visible on the phone and the site pages load quickly to capture users’ attention immediately.

6. Boost Client Reviews With Automation

Reputation management is essential to build trust and authenticity among your customers and grow your brand name. One of the best ways to do this is through client reviews and boosting the positive ones through automation that establishes credibility for your brand.

7. Retarget Past Customers And Leads

Most people call it social media listening, but marketers know it as retargeting. This is where people search for something on Google and see ads for the same service on Facebook and other platforms.

You can advertise to people who have shown interest and visited your website previously.

The traffic to your website automatically increases as your site grows. However, only a handful of these would be ready to buy from you. Those who are not yet employing your services are at the beginning of the cycle. They need retargeting to compel them to hire your services in the future.

8. Use PPC Ads

PPC ads are a fast way to make your law firm’s website visible on Google searches when you advertise on it. Tell Google the keywords you want to bid on and pay when someone clicks on your ad for an effective PPC campaign. The PPC ads data helps you determine your target market’s interest and alters your marketing campaigns accordingly.

Create landing pages specific to the ads to keep the audience engaged, giving them exactly what you promised in the ad. Also, expect to spend time on your PPC campaign in monitoring data, testing landing pages, refining, reviewing, etc., for effective marketing.

9. Publish Blogs

It might seem that people don’t read blogs anymore, but they do, and publishing blogs frequently can help your brand. Through relevant articles on topics involving law and policies, you can establish expertise and authority. Any new keywords and content you use alerts Google that your website actively provides relevant content.

Create a schedule for publishing to maintain consistency and ensure that there is a built-in blogging platform on your website to maintain design consistency.

For example, write about topics pertaining to your legal expertise, common questions, or client queries to showcase your knowledge. Additionally, include a CTA in all your blogs and create content that your audience wants.

10. Online Directories

As outdated as directories may sound, they can help your brand as large corporations fund online directory websites and invest a lot into SEO. As a result, if you have a profile here, your ranking can improve.

Since most of these websites offer free listings, you can enhance your SEO efforts in an affordable way.

11. Email Marketing

One of the best ways to stay in touch with your audience and create brand awareness is through emails. Build your email list with targeted customers and send frequent newsletters with updates on your firm, best legal practices, etc.

You can also provide links to your recent blogs or comment on some recent court ruling to give them a new perspective.

Conclusion

Digital marketing strategies are essential to use in this day and age, regardless of industry. As a law firm, these techniques can help you build your reputation and credibility among your target audience.

Digital marketing allows you to expand your reach and improve your chances to get clients to hire your services, ultimately improving your profits.

The post 11 Timeless Digital Marketing Strategies For Law Firms appeared first on Social Media Explorer.