Don’t Let Your Customers Mute You

Instagram is about to roll out another new feature, this time the ability to mute an account. According to an article on Adweek, Instagram’s new feature will allow users to stop interaction in a different way from simply blocking an account. Instead of not seeing anything from an account at all, muting an account lets you see their posts on their profile and be notified if you’ve been tagged in a post or a comment. Accounts that have been muted won’t know that you’ve taken this action, which is a more subtle way to avoid someone because blocking can be detected by the other party.

While this new change will help users who do not wish to see posts from certain people and keep complicated friendships in check, it does affect brands. This new change gives consumers the ability to mute brands who may be posting too much or are posting about things they aren’t interested in. The reason consumers will choose to mute instead of blocking or unfollowing is that they may really like the brand itself and its products and want the freedom to still be connected to them, but not have to see their posts.

When users decide to mute brands it leads to less engagement on their posts and the hard work they put into their posts is lost if users begin to opt out of seeing them.The best way to avoid this happening to your brand is to change what your posting if you see a dip in engagement. If you’re a clothing brand and only post images of clothing on a mannequin or on a hangar, change it up and have someone wear it and photograph it in interesting angles and make the photos interesting. It might help to try different types of content to see what works better for your account.

If you’ve worked so hard to attract the attention of a user and entice them to follow you, don’t throw it all away and lose this user’s attention. By having engaged followers, it increases the chances of converting them to a buyer of your products and if you continue to excite them and satisfy them, they’ll flourish into loyal customers that will generate a lot of revenue to your brand. Do not let this new feature swallow up your hard work, work smarter to create content that appeals to your followers.

If you have any thoughts or questions, please leave them in a comment below.

 

Image sourced: https://www.xitetech.com/mobiles/news/instagram-introduces-ability-to-mute-accounts-13385/

Facebook’s New Influencer Tool

Facebook is about to launch a new tool that will match advertisers with influencers. According to a Techcrunch article, Facebook has developed a new way to increase advertising spending on the platform by utilising this new tool to enable advertisers to find the perfect influencer to work with their brand.

The new tool is comprehensive enough to show influencers’ statistics, such as follower count, reach, engagement and information about their audience. This will allow advertisers to easily find the best personality that aligns with the brand’s value and who engage their target audience. This is also a fantastic initiative for influencers who are able to join this network and be eligible for partnerships. Once the brand has chosen an influencer, they can discuss business independently and its unsure whether communication will be through Facebook’s Messenger app or through other means such as email.

At the initial stage there is no charge to join this new service, but there could be a charge later on down the track. The tool only includes Facebook data, mostly because this is a move to keep advertising dollars in Facebook and also because they are just starting this service. There could be the potential to link Instagram up to it in the future, but that is not their focus right now. This can also motivate influencers to invest more time in Facebook content and to drive more traffic to their platform as opposed to other social networks, as this new tool allows for easier business deals.

This new tool is innovative and distinct as it hasn’t been done through an actual social network itself yet. The ability to search for what an advertiser wants and then being given a list of influencers that best match this, is like a Google search for influencers. This will definitely simplify sourcing influencers for brands, on Facebook, as other independent services may not have as large of a database of creators as Facebook does. It will be interesting to see how this new tool is received and the growth potential of it in the future.

If you have any thoughts or questions please leave them in a comment below.

 

Image sourced: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/engage-influencers-for-your-events-ds00/

 

 

Its the Small Things that Matter in Email Marketing

Email marketing is something a lot of companies have adopted and is a veteran in the digital marketing world. Its been around for so long and transformed with time to become synonymous with spam and that’s definitely something we need to move away from. If someone has gone out of their way to sign up to your newsletter, then why aren’t they reading them?

An article posted in Forbes discusses how the design of an email is crucial to getting more subscribers to open your emails. The first element she talks about is the humble subject line, the first thing your subscribers will see when they access their emails and if not done right, the last thing they see. Its imperative that you have an engaging subject line that tells your readers what they can expect from this email. If there’s a discount in the email, mention it, use it to entice your readers to open that email.

An element that quite a few of us forget to look at is the preview text that shows up just after the subject line. That small bit of text that can drive a reader to click on your email is often forgotten and instead a generic statement is left there instead. I know if I’m on the fence about opening the email I try and read the preview text to see if there’s anything interesting there. Take the time to ensure the preview text is engaging and relevant to readers for them to open the email.

Do not use excessive amounts of text and end up with a lengthy email that even you won’t read. Be brief and concise with what you have to say. You’ve worked so hard to have the reader open your email, don’t lose them, continue to hold their attention and explain what you have to say. Connect the brief message to a call to action, whether that’s clicking on a link to your website or a discount code that you’ve promised. By having an effective call to action you can convert readers into buyers or at least begin their buying journey by gaining further exposure to your brand and what you offer. It is important that you call to action is clear, so not too big and not too small to go unnoticed.

While these tips may seem really basic and simple, they are often overlooked or not implemented properly to create an effective email campaign. From the subject line to the call to action everything needs to work in harmony with each other and speak to the customer. You cannot afford to lose the customer throughout the path from email delivery to open because the more clicks you get to your website the more likely you will generate revenue through purchases directly from emails. Emails can be time consuming to construct and design, use this effort to bring more sales into your business and don’t just do it because everyone else is doing it, realise the potential of a successful email campaign.

If you have any thoughts or opinions please leave a comment down below.

 

Image sourced: http://cyberplexafrica.com/email-marketing/

SEM Rivalry Among Retailers

In March this year Zara launched their online store to complement their bricks and mortar offering and implemented Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaigns to drive awareness among Australian consumers. As an article in Smart Company explains, this caused other retailers to up their game and this began a bidding war. As SEM is the paid search engine tool, it works through the use of key search terms and a bid, with a combination of the most relevant and highest bidder being featured in the first 2-3 search results. This crucial spot at the top of the search results could drive major traffic to that website, however the green ‘Ad’ icon can deter people away too.

As retailers wanted to combat Zara’s entry into the Australian ecommerce landscape, they too began to launch larger SEM campaigns and bid higher than they did before to win over customers. While this is something competitors should consider, it is vital that businesses stick within their means. These big campaigns run by big companies like Zara who increased traffic to their website by 18,900% is unrealistic for smaller businesses.

In the article they also mention that SEM isn’t always the answer, SEO is a cost-effective way of bringing in more traffic to your website by people who are motivated and willing to purchase from you. As organic search results are the ones under the ‘Ad’ results, these can still give you important exposure. You are more likely to attract your target customer this way as these customers are most likely searching for businesses like yours and you don’t need to bid.

This situation really highlights how you should stick to what works for your business and not chase after what new and other competitors are doing because you need to focus on your target customers and optimising your business and what other businesses are doing may not suit you. At the end of the day most companies are out there to make profit so don’t waste money on SEM if SEO or another strategy works a lot better for you.

If you have any opinions or questions about this topic then please leave a comment below.

 

Image sourced: https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/best-annual-sales-to-shop/

Gmail’s New Groundbreaking Update

Gmail is such a common email platform that many of us use for personal and business use. Google recently announced an update to the Gmail we’re familiar with and unlike crazy YouTube refreshes this one feels just right. The new update includes some of the features that Outlook has that were missing from Gmail.  This article from Tech Crunch outlines what the new features are and how we can utilise them.

Gmail has a more comfortable look now with an added right-hand sidebar and some amazing new features that will benefit all of us. A feature that Outlook does so well is incorporating a calendar that makes organising meetings seamless. Previously Gmail lacked this feature, instead users needed to switch apps to access a calendar through their programs. Now there is a calendar icon on the new right-hand sidebar that opens up your Google calendar and lets you know what you have to do for the day.

To complement the sidebar we now have a ‘keep’ feature where you can take down notes and save them to access later. This is a great way to keep notes from calls, meetings or other activities and allows you to keep it all in Gmail for easy access so you don’t have post-it notes everywhere that are so easy to lose. The last feature on the side bar is the ‘tasks’ option where you can write down all the tasks you have for the day and tick them off as you go. This is another move to keep everything within Gmail and develops the platform to be a really handy workplace tool.

On top of the useful new sidebar, you can now choose to snooze certain emails. When you hover over an email in your inbox, you will now see a clock icon that lets you snooze an email to reappear later today or up to a week. This feature enables you to worry about an email later and have a clean and empty inbox in the meantime, which for me is a game changer. Gmail now also has a nudging feature, where Google’s artificial intelligence technology will scan your emails and decide whether its important to you and will keep bringing it to the top of your inbox for your convenience.

A really interesting change is the ability to make an email confidential, which gives you the option to make an email disappear after a certain time frame. This is a fantastic way to protect yourself from hackers as emails sent via confidential mode will be out of their reach once they disappear. You can still screenshot and take photos of it, but the fact that it’s not stored on your email is reassuring. The feature that affects marketers the most is that Gmail will send users suggestions to unsubscribe from emails that are never open. This will impact marketers as they are likely to lose subscribers more often and their customers are less exposed to their marketing material. However, by losing inactive subscribers who never open your emails your likely to only have customers who are interested in your business and will improve your open rate statistics.

This new Gmail update is groundbreaking and the sleek familiar look really shows that Google cares about their customers and don’t want to give them dramatic updates like with YouTube. The new features are innovative and really add to the user experience with the added productivity tools. This new update could lead to more workplaces leaving Outlook behind and adopting Gmail.

 

Image sourced: https://www.xda-developers.com/gmail-nudges-suggests-emails-reply/

 

Why You Need to be Careful with SEO

SEO can deceptively be seen as an easy way to bring traffic to your website, but there are many mistakes you can make that will hinder your growth from search. SEO, or search engine optimisation, refers to organic search results that show up on search engines. Businesses can utilise certain tools, like using keywords and being featured on prominent sites, to boost their ranking in search results.

The great part about SEO is that its free, but if you were to employ an agency to assist you with this and guide you then it begins to cost money. In an article in Mumbrella, Paul Carroll, a CEO at an SEO company, shared how he made a big mistake that put the business he was working for in an unfavourable position. Carroll employed an agency to assist him with boosting the business’ rankings on search and for the first 3-6 months they witnessed a heavy stream of sales leads coming into the business as they showed up higher in the search results. These fantastic results were short lived until Google updated their algorithm and their search rankings plummeted.

The agency Carroll had employed were using a wide range of links to boost the website’s authority, which Google didn’t like at all and penalised the website by giving them minimal exposure in search results. This is a good example of how you can easily easily do SEO wrong because once you’ve been penalised by Google, its difficult to come back. This also highlights the importance of knowing what exactly the agency is doing so that your business isn’t in danger and doesn’t end up in a similar situation.

Key things that brands can do to increase their presence on search is to ensure you have quality links back to your website on other sites. By having quality links from reputable websites it gives your site the authority it deserves and Google identifies you as a valuable website that will be suited to their customers. You should also use creative ways to implement keywords into your content because if you’re forcefully and annoyingly mentioning the same words excessively Google will see this as keyword stuffing and may penalise you and give you minimum exposure.

The world of SEO is wild to say the least as there are no set principles due to the algorithm being regularly updated. This makes it crucial that your business keeps up to date when the algorithm changes and continue to experiment and research ways to boost your ranking on search engines. This can be quite difficult as Google rarely states what they’ve changed, however you cannot afford to stand dormant and not keep changing with the algorithm because you will be left behind.

If you have any questions or opinions about this topic please leave a comment down below.

 

Image sourced: https://generationdigital.com.au/seo-sem/

Why Should Businesses Trust Facebook If Users Don’t Anymore?

Facebook has been under fire ever since news spread about the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach that saw millions of users’ data passed onto a third party unwillingly. While it has been talked about at length in the media, those who are really feeling the pressure are businesses. Businesses are plagued with ethical concerns as to whether advertising on Facebook is worth it. Now that this scandal has been brought into light the everyday Facebook user has become a little wearier of Facebook and could lead to decreased usage of the platform.

As was shared on this article from Tech Crunch Mozilla Firefox has decided to pull advertising on Facebook as a result of this scandal. What this situation highlighted was how Facebook’s privacy settings were not strong enough for the technologically advanced world we live in today where data is collected left right and centre. A major reason behind their decision to refrain from advertising on Facebook was how many third party apps could gain access to information such as your location, you education, work as well as posts you’ve made on Facebook. These third party applications include news articles, games and quizzes that you access through Facebook.

While Firefox has announced they will stay away from Facebook until privacy settings have been changed, there is the possibility that other companies are thinking the same way. The ethical dilemmas and questions that have been highlighted are definitely something companies should think about as its not best practice to be extracting this information from users who innocently wanted to see or engage with your content. It also raises the question of whether other companies should also pull their advertising dollars and utilise it in other platforms that don’t take advantage of their users.

Facebook is a great channel to advertise through, but with the PR storm they’re in right now and the threat of users deleting their accounts or reducing time spent on this platform, is it still sustainable to use your precious funds on this type of advertising? I think businesses should assess and consider other platforms and invest less in Facebook, at least in the mean time, as there are ethical dilemmas I cannot push aside and the seriousness of the accusations to the extent of Facebook having to testify in front of Congress. Its definitely not something Facebook should be proud of.

If you have any opinions about this topic I’ll be glad to hear about it in the comments below.

 

Image sourced: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/935009/Cambridge-Analytica-what-is-Facebook-data-breach-scandal

 

What Instagram’s New Chronological Feed Update Means For You

Is Instagram’s new supposed chronological feed going to benefit or hinder your business?

Instagram recently announced a new change that will bring the chronological feed back, however not to the same extent it originally was. As Harper’s Bazaar’s article outlines, Instagram is attempting to show newer posts at the top of your feed more often. They will also be introducing a ‘new posts’ button that will refresh your feed with newer posts. These changes will allow you to see more recent content and ensure that you’re keeping up to date with current events.

These changes were introduced in response to backlash Instagram received for abandoning their chronological feed to resemble a Facebook-like feed where they show you posts they think you care more about. The push towards reverting to the chronological feed has been gaining substantial momentum over the past few months. These changes were possibly pushed forward due to the wrath Facebook is facing over data and security breaches and Snapchat’s new update that was poorly received by their users.

While these changes are a step in the right direction for users, it does mean as a business you need to work even harder. This shift to showing more recent posts more often means that you need to optimise the times you post content and evaluate the possible reach. If currently you are posting at times that were convenient for you and expected the algorithm to push your post to the top of feeds through engagement and clever hashtags, then you need to change what you’re doing. You now need to analyse and decide when your target audience and existing followers are most active and set yourself reminders to be posting at that time. You also need to be wary of competitors who are going to be posting and cluttering news feeds at these times too. This presents the opportunity for you to ensure your content stands out and is personalised so users are engaged with your posts.

By paying attention to how your users are using Instagram and moulding your content so that your brand fits into your target audiences’ lifestyles, is the way to overcome this new hurdle. However, while these changes are happening and will change Instagram feeds, the platform is not switching to a completely chronological feed. At the end of the day Instagram is still a business and won’t trade off business interests.

This is a major update that will impact your business and hinder engagement and growth. However, there are ways to overcome this and more thoughtful strategies and increased knowledge of your customer will be key during this change.

If you have any questions or concerns about this new update, please leave a comment below.

 

Image soured: https://www.imore.com/hey-instagram-please-stop-ruining-my-feed-your-algorithm

 

The Beast that is the Instagram Algorithm

I came across this blog post on The Pigeon Letters that describes some of the changes that have been happening on Instagram this year because of the notorious algorithm. I have definitely felt the effect of this, from decreased likes to a reduction in my reach and profile views. Its becoming harder and harder to grow your account organically.

A number of features of this algorithm include:

• Instagram only showing a fraction of your followers your post if it doesn’t get as much engagement initially
• Getting shadow banned, which is an Instagram term referring to being invisible to those who aren’t following you. You can be shadow banned for a variety of reasons, including liking or commenting on too many posts in a short period of time, using bots to automatically engage for you, unfollowing too many accounts or being in breach of Instagram’s guidelines
• Pods leading to a shadow ban. Instagram pods refer to when a group of Instagram users form a group on Instagram and agree to like and comment on every new post a member releases straight away. This is a technique used to increase engagement in the initial hours that the post goes live
• Short comments of around less than 4 words do not count as engagement anymore. This means you need to encourage people to make meaningful comments, beside “Great post” “thumbs up”

These are some of the features of this evolved Instagram algorithm that could be affecting your business. As organic growth is harder to achieve you will need to assess the viability of using Instagram’s promote feature to promote your brand. Additionally, using influencers to market your products or services is another handy way to overcome this hurdle.

As engagement forms a major part in the success of an Instagram account its really important to respond and engage with comments you receive in each of your posts. This can be the difference between short comments that don’t mean anything anymore, to longer and more effective comments that foster a community relationship on your account. You also need to be using relevant hashtags that will expose you to your target audience. A handy way to engage with your existing followers is using Instagram stories, but in an authentic way. Use storytelling to bring personality to your account and share your brand values so that your followers feel like they can connect with your brand, instead of posting generic and static content that can lead to an unfollow.

Spending more time to hone your social media strategy, specifically for Instagram, will ensure you don’t sink among your competitors as the platform has become more competitive. Really consider your ability and need to use promotions and influencers to boost your brand.

If you have any thoughts or questions please leave a comment below.

 

Image sourced from https://weedoo.tech/instagram-arab-world-statistics-feb-2017/

 

Is Facebook hitting a wall?

Facebook has become that app on my phone that I hardly ever check, unless I need to wish someone happy birthday. I favour other apps like Instagram and spend a considerable amount of time there as well. The last time I was on Facebook properly was on my commute home from work a while ago when I was all caught up on my Instagram feed. What I saw were mostly ads, articles that freakishly related to my interests and funny memes. It was clear to me that the spark and fun I use to have on this platform had fizzled out and is now overshadowed by businesses.

Facebook pages are common among businesses and are an effective way to reach their customers in a way that suits their changing lifestyles and allows for direct interaction with them. However, this becomes ineffective if their customers are spending less and less time on there. According to the Sensis Social Media Report 2017, the average amount of times Australians access Facebook has fallen from 32 to 25 times per week, which contrasts Instagrams rise from 23 to 38 times per week. This demonstrates how Facebook users are becoming disengaged with the platform and are using other outlets to connect with their friends.

Facebook took a step in the right direction earlier this year by moving towards prioritising posts from friends as opposed to business posts. This will allow the platform to be more social and could work to keep people more engaged. However, the extent of this change will need to be seen first to conclude whether this will have any impact on users’ declining usage.

Facebook needs to come up with some groundbreaking changes to the platform that will give them an edge over their competition. Instagram utilised the story concept onto their platform and in my opinion did a better job than Snapchat ever did. Instagram came through with innovative filters and allowed tagging before moving to the highlights concept where you can save your stories onto you profile to be viewed by your followers and prospective followers at any time. Facebook needs to think of a concept that will keep their users engaged and work in harmony with businesses so that there is a balance in both.

What about you, how do you feel about Facebook right now?

 

Image sourced: https://travelthefire.com/forcing-facebook-to-change-your-page-name/