Tag Archive for: digital marketing strategy

Create a Social Media Calendar for Your Business

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Social media is an effective marketing and relationship building tool for many businesses. If it is part of your marketing strategy, you need a social media calendar to get the most from your effort.

With a calendar, you organize and plan your content, communicate timely events, and align your social media posts with other business initiatives. Creating a social media calendar helps you produce consistent, well-timed, quality posts that serve both your audience and your business.

Here are three factors to consider when creating a social media calendar.

Your Content and Goals

Your social media calendar should account for your existing and planned content. Make an inventory so you can plan an effective mix.

Common types of shareable content include:

  • News and events
  • Quotes and inspiration
  • Blog posts
  • Promotions
  • Questions and answers

Be sure to tag each piece of content with the goal(s) that each can support. This will help you to share content in a way that builds impact.

With an inventory you can plan for a mix suited to your audience and business goals. You’ll be better able to build up to special events and announcements as well as target specific objectives.

Your Audience

Offering great content is also about timing. When does your audience want your content? You need to know this to plan your calendar.

Some audiences are 9-5, Monday to Friday types. Others are more available on weekends or specific times of the day.

Look at your analytics to see when you are getting the most engagement. Talk to your customers to get their preferences. You can also get insights from national data sources like the Pew Research Center Social Media Fact Sheet.

Your Social Channels

You may be tempted to share the same content across all social channels. Don’t. You will want to present your content in a way that is effective for each channel.

This means using images, content and timing that is specific to each channel. So, you will need to research the optimal approach for each channel you plan to use.

Plan your social media calendar in a way that maximizes the potential impact on each channel.

Instagram Ideas for Your Brand

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Instagram offers a lot of features. If you haven’t looked to see what’s new there in a while, here are some things to consider for your marketing approach on Instagram.

Instagram Stories

It is estimated that just half of businesses on Instagram use stories. Those that do, get great results. One-third of the most viewed stories are posted by businesses.

Instagram Stories disappear after just 24 hours. Followers expect them to be more real and raw than your curated Instagram feed. They provide a great opportunity to connect with followers and build relationships.

You can create highlight albums in your profile to preserve your top Stories content, so it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours. Your highlight albums appear right under your bio, and you can create custom covers for each.

Instagram Shopping

Business accounts get access to Instagram Shopping. This feature, which is not available for personal accounts, allows you to sell products directly from Instagram posts and stories.

Influencer Partnerships

Working with an influencer can help to build your credibility while exposing your brand to a new audience. Invite an influencer to take over your Instagram account for a set period of time, like a weekend, or for a special event.

Instagram Ads

The surest way to get your content in front of a new audience is to run an Instagram ad. You can advertise in the Instagram feed or in stories. You can target your ads based on:

  • Location: State, province, city, country
  • Demographics: Age, gender, and language
  • Interests, such as other accounts people follow and apps they use
  • Behaviors, both on and off Instagram

Instagram Insights

You may get a sense of what works for you on Instagram, but there’s nothing like data to prove out your hunches. The best way to improve your results is to learn from what you’ve already done. Study the information available in Instagram Insights and adjust based on what the data tells you.

Fingers Crossed Is not a Marketing Strategy

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Guest post by Julie Young, Young Design

You just got a new logo, an optimized cool-looking website, and some beautiful print brochures; your brand is out there. Now what? Letting your website and marketing collateral gather dust is like tossing a coin into the fountain – you can wish and hope that they continue to work for you, but they won’t – not without tweaks, updates, redesigns, and downright overhauls.

It’s a fact: You must keep your marketing fresh to be effective. Responding to fast-changing technologies, business trends and cultural norms is part of a good marketing strategy.

Prioritize Web Maintenance

Part of protecting your brand is staying on top of the collateral you have in place, and keeping your website up to date is crucial. One look at a stale website without current content, and a user will click away — that’s one customer you just lost. Read our post on website maintenance for tips on setting goals, doing reviews, and assigning tasks.

Adapt Your Brand Identity

Aside from new markets, there will always be new ways to leverage and deliver your brand – social media, video, online ads, mobile apps, and new venues. Is your email campaign performing well? Do you have a blog? Well-optimized blogs are known to draw traffic. Have you thought about launching a podcast? They’re hot now. Do your research, and then make sure your brand adapts to these opportunities, whether it’s getting serious about using new technology or generating entirely new ideas to get the word out there.

Analyze Your Competition

Always, always be looking at your competition. Customers are most certainly comparing your company with others, even if you’re not. Here’s a good guide to finding your online competitors and identifying opportunities to outperform them.

Revisit Your Marketing Strategy Regularly

It’s easy to neglect marketing – business is booming, so who has time? But it’s fairly certain that at some point your business will be idling in the down loop of the roller coaster. Make your own luck: Look into the future and continue to make concrete plans even while things are busy.

About the Author

Julie Young is a print and web designer at Young Design. For over 20 years, she has been creating quality branding, websites, print collateral and email marketing to help companies communicate with their customers in order to raise profiles and profits.