Social Media and Your Business

From our perspective at Yellow Dot Design, adhering to corporate social responsibility is a must for any business. Below, we will be going over five distinct reasons why.

Benefit 1: Having a Positive Impact In The Community

By keeping corporate social responsibility at the forefront of your business practices, it will encourage the business to act in the best interest of society and to adhere to their own social and environmental impact. This will help businesses’ avoid making detrimental decisions to society and their local communities. In a lot of cases, organizations may find ways to make positive alterations to their own business services to provide even more benefits to their local communities in areas where they may have failed to previously.

Benefit 2: It Can Support Public Value Outcomes

The public value refers to the value that the organization is capable of contributing to society. Having a good and comprehensive corporate social responsibility framework established, it can help organizations provide the best possible outcome by improving their services to maximize the difference they are able to make in their local communities. This is something that can either happen directly or indirectly. It can enable customers of the business to contribute more to the local community or it can be done directly through the company’s own activities where they encourage more volunteering and philanthropy.

Benefit 3: It Supports The Idea Of Being An Employer of Choice

By showcasing that you are a business that gives employees the freedom of choice, it can help you not only attract but also retain high-end talent. A lot of employees place a high value on being able to work for a company that gives employees more power of choice in their work life. Therefore, you will be able to maximize the acquisition of high-end talent by providing and promoting a healthy workplace, better workplace conditions, and greater workplace flexibility. There have even been studies that have showcased that having a good and comprehensive corporate social responsibility framework established can allow a company to become a much more appealing destination to future employees who are aiming to work for a business with these practices and responsibilities already established.

Benefit 4: It Can Encourage Personal and Professional Development

By allowing employees to have the opportunity to get more involved in the community through comprehensive corporate responsibility, you will be able to promote not only professional but personal growth, a swell. By encouraging employees and giving them the opportunity to take on activities outside of their normal work responsibilities, it can give them the chance to work on and contribute to various causes they may have strong feelings about and it can even present them with new learning opportunities which can further enrich their personal and professional lives.

Benefit 5: It Can Help Boost Relationships With Clients

Having a strong corporate responsibility framework established is one of the best things that you can do to not only build but maintain trust between your company and its clients. It is going to give you the ability to support values that your clients may have which can create stronger bonds with you and your clients. This can be achieved by offering pro-Bono or other “at-no-cost” services to not-for-profit organizations in order to support their own public value outcomes.

Blogging doesn’t hold the same power it did a few years ago however that doesn’t mean it still isn’t an effective way to get traffic. An effective blog can still gather a big following. It’s not easy but if it was everyone would do it. See what we think are the best tips out there for people hoping to start their own blog with our blogging tips for beginners.

Have A Plan

Like all things in life, you have to have a plan to succeed. Without one you will just get lost and lose your way. 

Know Your Niche

Avoid diluting the content on your blog with multiple strands of content. Know what your niche is and write just for that. There are blogs for everything and if your blog starts to try and do a bit of everything then you won’t be a blog for anyone. It’d be weird if a travel blog started telling you about their yoga routine and then giving you history posts, so why are you any different? 

Beyond just audience issues, having lots of topics will make it hard to have an internal linking structure as topics won’t relate. If you want to build a useful following, know your niche.

Know Your Ideal Audience

Who do you expect to read your content? Or rather, who do you write your content for? This is a key question you must answer when starting a blog. If the people visiting your site aren’t getting value back out of it then they are useless to you and will never bother with you in a meaningful way. 

Think about who your ideal visitor is. Then think about what is the solution or information you can offer them. Write for that.

Consistency

If you take on to write a blog you are committing to it. If that commitment is once a month, twice a week or every day you are committing to it. Consistency is key to this. People have to know when to expect your latest post. If you write sporadically then how can anyone incorporate reading what you’ve written into their routine. 

Do out a publishing calendar to rectify this. Plan what content you are going to write and when you are going to post it. Stick to this to build a following.

Link Building Blogging Tips

Links are one of the pillars of SEO, but are hard to come by. To get some, start by looking at your competitors website and seeing where their links are coming from. Once you’ve done this reach out to those websites and ask if you can do a guest post too. They may charge you a small fee, but if you’re smart you can manage to wrangle a backlink from them.

SEO Your Blog

This is a key to getting your blog out there and is one of the biggest things you should focus on. Organise all of your content in a correct manner, search engines like being able to move around a site in a neat manner.

Then have an internal linking structure and be regimental about it. Try and avoid linking to pages that don’t relate to the same topic or belong to the same category.

On-page SEO is another pillar of SEO, and is just as important as link building to help get your page ranking highly.

Learn more about SEO with our basics guide.

Social Media

Not only should you use social media as a way to promote your blog and get traffic, but get to know people using it. Like, comment and engage with other people within your community.

Social media signals are another big element to promote your blog. This relates to the likes, shares and comments you get on posts that link to your site. This shows that the piece of content you’ve created is of use and people find it interesting.

Monetising Your Blog

Now that you’ve done all of that work you may want to get something rather than just praise back out of it. Even if it’s just to cover the costs of hosting and your domain, monetizing your blog isn’t a bad idea.

Guest Posts

Charge people a fee to write a post on your website and have it link back to their site. People will email from within your niche asking to write on your page. This is against most search engines policy so proceed with caution.

Ads

Although Ad Sense isn’t what it once was, you can still generate revenue from displaying ads on your site. There are also alternatives out there to Ad Sense and if this is something you’d consider we would say they are worth investigating.

Affiliate Marketing

Gain commission by selling products for companies indirectly. Have a list of items relating to your niche that you? Reach out to those companies and offer them your services in exchange for a small part of each sale.

Blogging Tips Conclusion

Blogging is in no way done and dusted. It is still a thriving community and is one that you can make your own space in. Follow the blogging tips in this guide to start the right way.

It’s not easy to grow organically on Instagram. Sometimes it can feel a little like chasing your tail. All you want to do is to start to reach out to new audiences, but Instagram doesn’t make that easy. Some people turn to third party apps to try and grow their Instagram automatically. This sounds great; you grow your Instagram without having to do anything beyond posting. However, this comes with many caveats. If Instagram gets a sniff of you using a bot to grow your brand they will throttle your reach/engagement, or at worst ban your account.  It also might not actually lead to useful growth. Sure these people will like your photos, but will they actually be bothered to engage with you in a way that’s beneficial to your business.

Below we will give you the ways to grow your brand in our opinion.

Engage With Companies Similar To Yours

Likes and comments for the sake of it are no use to you. Those people will never actually buy from you or engage with you. Sure, the vanity likes are nice but ultimately useless. However, going for businesses with a similar service or product isn’t a bad idea. These comments should be of genuine interest and actually be helpful and polite. Just ask a question related to the post or give your opinion. It doesn’t have to be something insanely detailed or expansive, just something to get your name in there.

Plan, Plan, Plan For Organic Instagram Growth

Like all things in business, it is best to plan. Not only does this save you tonnes of time when it does come time to actually post, but the quality of your content will increase massively. Know what works in the niche you’re working in. Take this and think of the content you can post. Plan out certain days to post certain kinds of content. Then at the start of every week, or month plan all of your posts out. Down to the very last hashtag. This means that not only will your content be done, but that you can ensure it all has a similar feel to it and that it is of use. This can be the big difference between posting something no one will ever read, or something that will get lots of useful engagement.

Make Stories Your Weapon Of Choice

Stories let you be you. Having a curated feed is perfect, it should act almost like a portfolio piece for you. However, stories are where you can let people see behind the scenes and the more human side to your company. They are the casual place to let people engage with your brand. Ask questions, use polls, use boomerangs. There are tonnes of features constantly being added to Instagram for you to use to drive engagement. Use these features to your advantage. This is also a great way to build trust. If you want to see how to build trust using social media, see our earlier post on it here.

Know Your Audience To Gain Organic Followers

Use Audience Insights as a way to figure out who is actually engaging with your brand. There’s no point putting up content targeting people aged 18-25 if the people who follow you are over the age of 35. If you keep pushing the wrong message to the wrong people then you will really struggle to grow organically on Instagram. The right message to the right audience is sure to lead to more engagement. 

Look at competitors to see what kind of content they post that gets the most interaction and copy it. If they have unlocked what message gets the best response then why can’t you. Failing this, just ask. Put a question on your story asking people what kind of content they want to see more of.

Use Hashtags For Organic Growth

Hashtags are still an effective way to grow your brand. You don’t need to fill your post with tonnes and tonnes of them, not only is this time consuming but may also get you blacklisted. Instead we recommend using around 7 at a time that are actually of use to your brand. Look at multiple competitors accounts and see what hashtags they are using to get the best results. Just make sure the hashtags are of relevance to your offer.

Cross Promotion

Have a big following on Twitter? Share a post from your Instagram profile there to get people to visit. Easy. Add an Instagram icon to your emails, each email you send will let people access your account.

Collaborations For Organic Gains

Work with other companies. Share your audiences. Re-share a post on your stories or get them to mention you in one of their posts. People always click to see the other person’s profile. Get someone with an audience similar to your own and work with them in some way to grow organically online. Your followers will begin to work like a Venn diagram. Post about working together, meeting up or even just sharing a post the other person made every so often is a sure method to gain followers. 

Know someone with a big following online with a similar demographic to yours? Give them a free product or service and get them to mention you in a post. Get your brand in front of those relevant to you.

Conclusion

These are our 7 best tips to help you grow organically on Instagram. It’s not easy to do and requires time. However, following this guide will let you build slowly but surely and increase not only your reach, but your customer base.

The marketing funnel is the bread and butter of every marketer and advertiser there has ever been. It is the journey a customer takes from first hearing about your product or service to then becoming a loyal user. In essence it remains the same, however things change over time and in this piece we will examine this.

Social Media and Marketing Funnels

Social media was always seen as a way of creating brand awareness, now however it has become a critical tool. Creating engagement and nurturing those viewers into sales and beyond is now the key use of social media. The core of this marketing funnel remains the same even though others have tried to make adaptations. The words “cold, warm and hot” are often used to describe the funnel 

Stages of the Marketing Funnel

The marketing funnel breaks down into four sections: brand awareness (cold), engagement (warm), consideration (warmer) and purchase/action (hot).  We have two stages in the middle of the funnel and added action to the bottom of the funnel as not every funnel ends with a sale. Anyway, let us properly breakdown these stages.

• Brand Awareness

This is just letting people know that you exist. Every social media can be used to achieve this, and it is what social media has been used for historically. Paid brand awareness is the cheapest option on most social networks to grow your audience. At this stage your only hope is to reach people who have never heard of you before.

• Engagement

Now, let the process of narrowing down your audience begin. This is when you start to narrow your funnel from complete strangers to those who actually engaged with your brand awareness campaign. Knowing a company exists is one thing, actively engaging with their message is another. This engagement may come in the form of watching a video, liking a post, or even just clicking on a post to read more. You may or may not get some web traffic at this stage.

• Consideration

Okay, so now you have caught a potential customer’s interest. They are considering buying from you and are interested in you but need that extra tip along to get them to convert. This can be done in a number of ways on social media. Social proof like testimonials from customers and reviews is one way to do it. Another is offering a discount on first time purchases using a code or an offer with an expiration date.

Every industry’s stage of consideration will be different and will need to be tailored to suit that business’s needs.

• Action/Purchase

The last stage of the funnel where hopefully all of that work will have paid off. This depends on your business, some businesses will have a purchase at the end of their funnel, others will see arranging a meeting as the last step. This is if everything goes well. If the potential customer doesn’t finish their journey then you’ve to understand how to get them back and into the funnel again.

No Two Marketing Funnels Are The Same. 

Every funnel will have it’s own intricacies. Some will take minutes to complete, others will take months. Some sales will happen at stage one, some won’t happen in stage 4. It entirely depends on the customer and the product. A cheap product won’t have the same journey as a high-end product. People may be in one stage of the funnel for a very long time before finally tipping into the next, there is no way to be sure how exactly it will work. They key, like all things in marketing is try and experiment constantly. 

Facebook Ads and a Funnel

The best thing you can do for your funnel is to have it run as smoothly as possible. If you’re using Facebook Ads for your funnel they make this quite easy.

For your brand awareness audience you don’t want to waste money showing your ad to people who already know who you are. Therefore you should exclude people who have visited your website or engaged with your page before. Do this using Facebook’s Pixel.

For your engaged audience you only want people who saw your stage one ad, obviously. However, going beyond this you don’t want people who clicked straight through to your website from stage one. They are a step ahead, so exclude website traffic from this stage.

At stage three your audience is broken down into those who engaged with you in any way. We want to take the stage two audience and direct them to our website. The language used should also become more sales orientated.

Our final stage is converting these people into customers.

After the Funnel

Your marketing shouldn’t stop once customers have made a sale. Now you have to turn these customers from once off clients into loyal buyers. Offer them a different product or an incentive to become a lifelong customer and restart your funnel again. Keeping a customer is far cheaper than gaining a new one.

Want to know the difference between a boosted post and an ad created with Facebooks Ad Manager?

In this piece we will explain to you the differences you must be aware of to best use your money.

What are paid ads and why use them?

Paid ads are exactly that, ads you pay for on Facebook/Instagram to increase your reach to specific audiences. This is what makes them different from regular Facebook posts. You have two options to choose from; boost or an ad. How do you decide? Well that depends.

Boosted Facebook Posts

Boosted posts are just regular Facebook posts that you pay to increase their reach, get more page likes, shares etc. To do this all you have to do is go to a post from your business, click boost. This is the simplest way to get a paid advertisement on Facebook or Instagram.  When you do this the post will appear in people’s Facebook or Instagram feeds. 

Your options to customise are:

1. Your target audience. Get your ad in front of the audience you want by using Facebook’s targeting methods.
2. Set the max amount you want to spend over the given time frame.
3. Pick the amount of time you want your ad to run for.

Click boost and once your ad is approved it will be shown to your chosen audience. 

Facebook Ads Using Ads Manager

Facebook ads are ads created using Facebook Ads Manager. These offer more customisation in just about every aspect of their creation, from objectives to the times they are shown at. They allow you to be more accurate with your targeting more varied in your creative content. Set your objective beyond just page likes or post shares to app installs or store visits with Ads Manager.

What Are My Options In Ads Manager?

Placements

Choose where you want you ad shown. Want to post only stories? No problem, just make sure you tick the correct boxes in placements. Unlike using a boosted ad you get to control exactly where your ads get placed and shown using Ads Manager. Go beyond using just feed placements and put your ad on Facebook News Feed side ads, Messenger ads, Instagram stories, instant articles, and Audience Network.

Objectives

More options in terms of objectives. When using Facebook Ads Manager you can pick from in total 11 objectives. These are Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Engagement, App installs, Video Views, Messages, Leads, Conversions, Catalogue Sales and Store Traffic. This list goes far beyond the three options you get using a boosted post.

Creative Variety

A boosted post lets you just use regular Facebook posts. These are usually images or videos. With Ads Manager you get to use carousel ads that combine images with text, or collection ads. These show a variety of products from your catalogue and act as a virtual storefront for your business. On top of this you get to add a number of call-to-action buttons like “Learn More” or “Shop Now.”

On top of this, in most ads you can add a variety of copy options to one post. This gives you more opportunities in getting the creative of your ad right.

Audience

Boosted posts let you target using demographics. This is still a big feature of Ads Manager, but you can do more. Create a lookalike audience using your website or people who engage with you somehow. Want to retarget people who visited your site? Simple. Using Facebook’s Pixel you can do this within a few minutes.

There are more options to customise your ads using Facebook Ads Manager but these are the main ones.

Which Should I Use?

Both have their uses. If you don’t want to put in the effort but still want results, a good boosted post will work. If you want to go the next step then Ads Manager is for you.