We have come to the end of another year. It’s time to have a look at the trends for 2020 so that you can prepare your social media strategy for the year ahead.
1.Authenticity Glossy, staged content, clickbaity headlines have had their day. People are looking for authentic content from the people and brands they follow. They are looking for honest conversations. Authenticity drives trust, loyalty and ultimately sales. Being authentic doesn’t mean, you have to post on the go and in real-time only. Planning and scheduling your content is okay, you can’t be on social media all the time. Being strategic with your content, and automating it allows time for engagement with your followers. 2.Private chats & communities In 2019 we have seen most of the social media platforms encouraging their users to have private discussions either in direct messages or in groups. The latest addition of Threads on Instagram is an example of this. As a small business owner, how can you encourage this? Is there an opportunity for you to create your own Facebook group? You can also invite people to engage with you privately on Instagram. Stories is brilliant for this: ask questions, invite them to interact with you with the stickers, polls, etc. so that you can have more intimate conversations with your followers. 3.Video According to a study by Cisco, by 2022, 82 % of all online content will be video content. Use video for storytelling, for thought leadership, for adding value, for showing how your products work. For makers, sharing a timelapse video of you making your products works brilliantly. We can also show behind the scenes in our businesses or share our life outside of our businesses. What problems are we having? What makes us excited? For small business owners, video can be a great tool for connecting with their followers on a personal level. 4. User-generated content (UGC) These raw, unpolished videos or photos that are shared by your followers are very valuable because followers find them more trustworthy. UGC looks native to the platform and therefore doesn't look like a sales pitch. Even big brands started using UGC on their platforms. 5.IGTV IGTV will continue to grow. If you go the Explore page on Instagram, you can see how much emphasis is given to IGTV. The thumbnail of the IGTV video is much bigger compared to the photos on the page. Last week I attended a workshop run by Paula from Marketing Vision and Helen Perry from Not About The Kids. Helen gave us a great tip about starting a series of a theme on IGTV. Consider what you want to share with your audience and create a series of videos. If you are looking for inspiration, Helen has great tips on her blog. 6.Removal of Number of Likes Instagram has been testing the removal of likes in several countries. If likes no longer matter, what will? Deeper interactions and conversations with followers will become more important. Are people commenting on our posts, are they saving them for future reference? We will need to think about how we can create content that will enable these. 7. Social commerce Social referral to retail e-commerce sites has grown 110% in two years, outpacing all other referral channels.** The primary players in social commerce are Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. In the UK, there are currently 8.4 million British consumers shopping via social media and the number of UK businesses selling products through social media is set to double in 6 months. *** If you have an e-commerce business and haven't started advertising yet, there can be a huge potential for you. In the ever-evolving world of social media, we need to embrace the changes. Here's to an amazing 2020! *https://tubularinsights.com/video-2021/ **https://www.emarketer.com/content/social-commerce-2019 *** Paypal data via Social Chain Need help? Get in touch to book a Power Hour or book a free discovery call. Don't forget to subscribe to my email list to get my FREE pdf that will give you ideas to use in your Instagram Stories.
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Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, we can officially talk about Christmas shopping. It is the busiest time of the year for most businesses, especially for e-commerce businesses. How can you use this opportunity to boost your sales? Today, I am sharing seven tips that I hope you will find useful.
1. Most of the traffic to your website will come from mobiles so make sure your website is mobile-friendly and loads fast. 2. 8.4 million British consumers shop via social media with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat being the most popular channels.* Keep promoting your festive products on your social media platforms. Top tip: Add a story highlight showcasing your best products. 3. Make things as easy as possible for your customers. Remember, at this time of the year, they are buying gifts for friends and family. They might be confused and distracted with lots of offers. Make sure you have your best selling products visible as well as a search bar. Offer “guest check out” and “buy now” options. 4. Use Facebook & Instagram ads to retarget people who have viewed your products, added them to their carts but have not purchased them. 5. Today’s customers use social media to contact brands. Offer high-quality customer service by responding to messages and emails promptly. 6. Make sure you have enough stock as you don’t want to appear unable to cope at the busiest time of the year. Bring on additional staff to handle increased orders if necessary. 7. People love going to the stores to enjoy the festive vibes. How can you recreate that emotional experience on your website and marketing?Make sure you have a Christmas campaign strategy for both your online advertising and email marketing. This time of the year is not for testing new ideas or making huge changes on your website. Save those for the new year and focus on your customers. Give them the best experience so that they keep coming back. * Paypal research Need help? Get in touch to book a Power Hour or book a free discovery call. Don't forget to subscribe to my email list to get my FREE pdf that will give you ideas to use in your Instagram Stories. As a Facebook marketer, I always talk about how impactful Facebook ads can be for growing your business. The reason is 2.3 billion people and counting are on Facebook every day. There’s an audience out there looking for your products! However Facebook is not magic, you are not going to see the best results if you don't have the basics covered first. Today let's talk about those basics so that you get a head start when you are ready for advertising. 1.First things first: If you are serious about investing money in Facebook ads, you need to have a decent budget. Think of this as an investment to buy data from Facebook. If you want to spend £50 here and there,or boost a post for £5 a day, you’re not investing enough money for Facebook to feed it out and to learn from it. 2.Grow your Facebook & Instagram accounts to a decent size before starting to invest in ads. This is because, people will check out your social profiles when they come across your ads. If you only have a handful of likes on your Facebook page, they won't be able to understand whether or not you are a credible company that they can trust. Once you have a decent size of around 300 people then it's time to venture into paid social. 3. I cannot stress the importance of having an active Facebook and Instagram page. Your organic content is still very important. If you have an engaged audience, Facebook will reward your ad experience and overall your costs will decrease. 4. Make sure you set up the Facebook pixel on your website. The pixel tracks every visit to your website. Even if you don’t have the budget or audience to start ads right now, you can start collecting valuable data. 5. How is your website? Is it optimised for mobile? Does it upload quickly? You need to be able to offer a smooth checkout process to customers. If you don't have that, even if your ads direct people to your website, people will not take the actions you want them to. If the website is slow, or if checking out is difficult (ie you ask people to create a profile), delivery costs are too high, then people will bounce off and buy from someone else. 6. Know your audience : Facebook offers very granular targeting. For example, you can target people based on their demographics, interests, languages and location. You can target people who visited your website, who follow you on Facebook and Instagram and you can create custom audiences and upload your email list. 7. Are you able to cope with the increased demand that will come with the ads? Do you have systems or teams to deal with the increased demand? If not, then it doesn't makes sense for you to grow the business just yet. Make sure you have the capacity to scale before investing in advertising. Facebook advertising can make an impact putting your offer in front of the right audience and it can make this impact much faster than other marketing methods. However you need to have the foundations in place first. Need help with growing your Instagram account or running Instagram ad campaigns? Get in touch to book a Power Hour or book a free discovery call if you need help with running Instagram ads. Don't forget to subscribe to my email list to get my FREE pdf that will give you ideas to use in your Instagram Stories.
Instagram has grown exponentially in the last couple of years. Whilst this is great, growing an audience and getting sales or leads is not as easy as it used to be. Turning your followers into paying customers requires a carefully devised strategy. It goes without saying that we need to use great images, captions that invite readers to engage with us, carefully chosen hashtags and Stories that will increase our impact. But what else could you do increase your Instagram sales? Here are my top tips: 1.First impressions are important. Instagram is a visual platform. You need compelling images that tells the story of your brand and showcases your products. Decide on the aesthetic side of things and stick to them. What kind of images will work best for you? What kind of filters are you going to use? Will you use quotes, testimonials or user generated content? Think about all of these and use an app such as Later or Unum to plan a cohesive looking page. 2.Make sure your bio tells people what you do or sell in a clear way. Make sure you have your website and logo in your profile. Remember, people will decide whether to follow you or not in a few seconds. Make those seconds count. 3.Set up Instagram shopping if you are selling physical products. If you are using Shopify, Squrespace, Woomerce or similar platforms, you can easily connect your catalog with Facebook. This will allow followers to easily buy your tagged products on Instagram. If you have more then 10k followers, you can also add the Swipe Up function to your Stories. 4.A good Instagram influencer marketing strategy can help you get high traffic and more engagement, which in turn brings higher returns. Build relationships with key influencers in your industry to grow your reach and sales. 5.Use Instagram advertising to target audiences such as your Instagram followers, lookalikes of your Instagram followers or people who engaged with your Instagram posts. You can do so either through Business Manager or through your Instagram profile. If you want to start promoting your Instagram posts directly through Instagram, go to your profile and select Promotions. Click on create your promotion, choose the photo you want to promote. Next you will select where you want to send people: your profile, your website or your direct messages. Once you select one of these options, you select your target audiences. Again you have a few options there, the automatic option targets people similar to your followers or you can manually enter targeting options. Then you choose your budget and set it to go live. Whilst this option is quick and easy, the Business Manager offers more strategic targeting functions. 6.Connect with your audience by building trust and like. Share the production process, your story,show them what makes your brand unique and how your products work. Why should they buy from you but not from a competitor? What do you offer that will hook your audience? Free shipping, 10 % off to your email subscribers, gift wrapping etc. 7. Are your followers sharing photos of your products? Share those with your followers. User-generated content provides great social proof for you. Professional photos of your products are great and of course has a place but we see more and more people wanting to see less polished images these days. All of these strategies will help amplify your Instagram presence and increase sales as a result. Need help with growing your Instagram account or running Instagram ad campaigns? Get in touch to book a Power Hour or book a free discovery call if you need help with running Instagram ads. Don't forget to subscribe to my email list to get my FREE pdf that will give you ideas to use in your Instagram Stories.
When I was travelling recently, I was served this ad because Facebook knew that I was at Gatwick Airport. How did they target me? Because with Facebook, you can set up location targeting. If you have a local business such as a brick and mortar shop, than it makes sense to target everyone living in that location. Let's say you have an event,or a restaurant and want to attract people around Southbank Centre in London, then you can choose the option to target people who are travelling in this area. These are your location targeting options. * Everyone in This Location * People Who Live in This Location * People Recently in This Location * People Traveling in This Location Choosing the right targeting can help you stand out from the crowd and reach your audience. This works great for local businesses, cafes, restaurants, gyms, pop up shops, events, travel and tourism businesses.... If you need any help planning your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns, please get in touch. I can either help you run your ads with an hourly consultancy service or run your campaigns for you as a done-for-you service. Get in touch to find out more.
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