1. Be strategic with posting.

When posting on your company’s social media page, you shouldn’t just post on it just to post. All of your social media content should have some kind of purpose. You think about the actions you’ll want your audience to take as a result of seeing your post. When considering the next update you write, look at your Facebook Insights, and see what content has typically been popular. Use that as a guide when posting on your page. Additionally, check the pages of your competitors and analyze the content that has been successful. Attempt to recreate that content in a unique way.

2. Create an attractive cover.

While you can choose to put up your business logo as a cover, you might miss an opportunity to create one that really engages your audience. Consider looking into putting together a video cover for your page. You could arrange some short clips of what happens in your business in a day. You could also put some clips of pleasant customer interactions or your employees being happy to work there. Using a video cover can be a great way to highlight your small business’ culture and brand.

3. Plan out your content.

Just posting day to day without any kind of plan can quickly get overwhelming. Having a calendar and schedule can make it easier to strategically post each day at specific times of the day. Use an online tool like Trello to pre-plan all your posts for the month. Then, preload the content into a tool like Buffer, which will auto-post your content for you. Using these tools will allow you to focus on other important work with your business. You’ll only have to log in to check how your content is performing and respond to your followers’ comments.

4. Go live.

Potential customers enjoy getting to see casual content in video format. You can use Facebook’s Go Live, too, and show your followers a behind-the-scenes look of your business. It can be unscripted and focus on a general part of your company that’s interesting. Examples of live feeds you can consider doing include sharing customer testimonials, showcasing new products, doing tutorials, and many other ideas. Once you finish your live video, you can save it and feature it on your page for future visitors to find later.

5. Custom audiences

Running ads doesn’t require a large expense to do effectively. All it takes is getting your posts seen by the right people through targeting. Facebook provides you tools to create a custom audience that your ads can be shown, too. It’s helpful to have a good understanding of the demographics associated with your business. Once you set up the ad, you can use the Facebook pixel on your website to focus on a certain behavior you want to be the outcome of your ad. You can build a custom audience based on visits and engagements on your page, the number of people who watch your video, subscribers to your newsletters, and a variety of other ways. Alternatively, you could have Facebook create an audience of people matching your existing audience’s behaviors and interests or your own customer list.

6. Friendly interaction

Communicate with your followers as if they were your own friends on Facebook. Humanizing your brand in this way will make more people interested in engaging with your page. One tactic you can try is reaching out to your followers with no specific purpose of selling them anything. You could ask how they’re doing and just check if the product or service you provide is doing well for them. When you give value to your followers without anything in return, it helps build a lasting relationship. 

Additionally, in accordance with Robert Cialdini’s reciprocity principle, they’ll feel more like doing something nice in return, such as purchasing one of your products or service. Similar to how people don’t enjoy those on Facebook who always talk about themselves, they also don’t enjoy a brand that always promotes itself. It’s wise to also have your team read every comment and respond to them as soon as possible. The responses should be detailed and thoughtful. You can further humanize your company by having people sign off every reply with their first names.

7. List your page on Facebook maps.

Perhaps you’ve once used Facebook’s “check-in” tool to mark yourself as having visited somewhere. It’s important to know that you can use that same tool with your business as well. Whenever a customer checks in to your location, the person’s timeline will display their check-in to your company and link to your brand page. To make this happen, you need to have your company listed under the “Local Business or Place” category.

Customers can be encouraged to check in at your business location by offering them points or discounts every time they do it. If one of your customers that does this happens to have 100’s of friends on Facebook, and most of them are locals, that can be great targeted visibility for your brand. People will also be influenced to trust shopping at your business more since one of their friends was a customer.

Facebook has been a useful tool for many businesses trying to market themselves and build their customer base. All of these tips can be useful for helping your company expand its visibility and become more profitable. Constantly experiment with different techniques, and take time to learn more about digital marketing from this agency in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Social Media Marketing: More Might Not Necessarily be Better

One common misconception in regards to social media campaigns is that their main goal is to reach as many potential consumers as possible. While this is true to an extent, you should instead be focusing upon contact as many customers within your unique demographic. You will otherwise spend an inordinate amount of time chasing leads that may never come to fruition.

Also, we need to keep in mind that massive marketing campaigns will take a great deal of time to proactively manage. These responsibilities can easily take away from other concerns such as sales and product development. We can therefore see that the most important step is to first determine your target audience. You can then create tailor-made campaigns which resonate the most with their unique needs. This will likewise enable you to better understand the efficacy of a specific approach, so changes can be made as they seem fit.

The Smart Approach to Social Media Advertising

We can clearly see that more is not better when it comes to social media marketing. So, where should you begin? It is first wise to work in synergy with e-commerce solutions such as the utilities and tools provided by Shopify Plus. There are several advantages to this approach:

• You can manage all social media channels from a centralised interface.
• You will be provided with informative and in-depth analytics.
• It is much easier to interact with your audience.
• Your products and services will be presented in a favourable light thanks to advanced website design options.

Assuming that you have a solid e-commerce solution in place, you will next need to adopt a more pragmatic approach to your marketing campaigns. Try to determine which posts have garnered the most attention. What do they share in common? Are they all associated with a specific product? What about the tone of voice? When were they created and what types of media content (if any) was embedded within their structure? If you are able to discover which posts generate the most interest, it will be much easier to curate similar material in the future.

Social media marketing should represent the cornerstone of any successful business. This is why the suggestions highlighted above will always come in handy if you are eager to connect with your audience.

The post Are You Making the Most Out of Your Social Media Advertising Campaigns? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Flocksy is a platform for creating digital marketing components. They offer web development, graphic design, copywriting, and video production services. Flocksy is a professionally managed flat rate creative services and content platform focused on long-term relationships with clients, designers, and partners. They are always making it easier and more efficient to connect to a team of creatives who will get all your work done. 

They are affordable, easy and efficient, and fast. Flocksy utilizes only U.S.-based project managers who understand the needs of both clients and on demand teams. Their team is fully vetted and tested, ensuring their clients get top notch results for the projects they desire. Flocksy was founded in 2016 by Sam, George, and Charles Ryan as the first platform of its kind to offer the breadth of services and consistency of teams.

Flocksy works for small to medium sized businesses that need marketing work done quickly and professionally for an affordable cost. They help their customers with all their marketing projects for a fraction of the price they would pay an inhouse team. Their service replaces the typical full-time designer, video editor, developer or writer and more. 

They are always trying to reach more customers and expand their services to offer more, such as SEO and posting on Facebook and Instagram. By the end of the year they will have at least three more services available. A year from now, they will have more services, faster turnaround times and an even smoother process. Five years from now, they will be THE place to go to connect with a team of professionals for a flat rate. 

Flocksy integrates chat functionality and a full dashboard, both of which are focused on consistent, best work practices for every project. Their platform vets and selects only the best creatives from around the world, ensuring work is done correctly and on time. Flocksy was designed so clients get a whole team they are working with and not one person that they may or may not connect with.

Businesses sign up and can create unlimited design, video, development and writing projects. Flocksy then forms a fully vetted team around the customer’s account based on the projects they run, their style, and more. The team then works on all their projects and makes sure to keep their brand and style consistent. Their professional-grade work is work we use ourselves. 

Accounts are each assigned a dedicated Project Manager. The Project Manager is USA based and oversees the client’s team and account. If the client has any questions, issues with the team, concerns about a project or more, they can simply reach out to their Project Manager for a fast response (usually in under an hour). 

The teams get projects done in 12 hours on average. Since there is always someone available on the team to work on the projects, there are few delays and most projects are done correctly and consistently the first time around. This allows businesses to scale and start as many projects as they need without any bottlenecks. 

Clients can do as many projects as they can complete in a given month.  In order to better focus on client work, projects can be located into our dashboard and are completed one at a time.  When you sign off on a project, the next one begins. The dashboard includes recent activity in a client’s account, the team, the client’s active projects and stats on their activity. 

Flocksy is very user friendly. Clients can easily sign up and create projects within minutes. They can easily provide feedback by commenting and tagging designs within a project. Once the client is happy with a project, they can simply close it out and the team starts on the next project in the queue. Wayne Rash, a technology and science writer at Forbes, wrote in a recent article, “Flocksy is a good example of how business services are evolving to be part of the concept of platforms, just as a vast array of companies formed personal service platforms. Done properly, these platforms provide a source for business services that provide customers with high quality work by experienced staff in a timely and affordable manner. They also provide top quality talent to smaller businesses that couldn’t get staff of that quality any other way.”

The post How Business Services Are Evolving To B Part Of The Platform Concept appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

However, far too many businesses find that they are publishing content but not seeing a return on their investment. This is often because there is a lack of a blogging strategy, almost no unique value to the content, and no calls-to-action. If you want to maximize your online visibility, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and boost sales, you need to try these five simple ways to improve your blog posts. 

Step 1: Enhance Your Content

Back up your content with stats and sources 

Data studies can produce fantastic blog posts, but we are living through times of uncertainty, and many people struggle to trust what they read on the internet without some form of evidence. If you are going to make statements or claims which could be disputed, try to include specific statistics, and cite your sources. 

Use graphics and imagery to enhance the content

Thanks to social media, people are used to consuming information very quickly through short pieces of content, imagery, videos, and graphics. Rather than presenting readers with a wall of text, try to break it up into smaller sections that are easy to digest. Graphics can be used to pick out key pieces of information which even skim-readers can take in. The more engaging the blog is, the more likely it is that visitors will hang around your website and share it. 

Remember to proof your work before publishing

Writing content is not always straightforward, and even the most experienced writers make mistakes, so it is vital to take the time to read your post a few times before publishing it. This gives you the chance to catch spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, repetitive content, and clumsy sentences. Writing tools like Grammarly can be a great help when trying to ensure your blog post is written accurately, which will give your blog a professional finish. 

Step 2: Maximize Conversion Rates

Implement long-tail keywords

Most blog writers understand that they should include keywords that are relevant to their business, but they may not be focusing on long-tail keywords. These keywords are actually more like phrases of 3-4 words. They tend to be less competitive but convert at a higher rate as they are more specific in terms of user intent. By identifying and including keywords that convert at a higher rate, you can attract more valuable traffic. Click here to find out more about keyword research.

Use Google Analytics to inform your strategy

When you have a few blog posts under your belt, you can use Google Analytics to get some insight into their success. You will see which posts have attracted the most visitors and if those visitors have gone on to make a purchase, place an inquiry or similar. There are also lots of other metrics that can be useful, including which channels are driving traffic to your blog posts, such as social media, email marketing campaigns, organic search results, or paid advertising. When you know which posts are performing and which are not, you can focus your future blog writing strategy in the right direction. 

The post How to Improve Your Blog appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

How do you go about branding your website in the 21st century? Everything is digitally orientated so it is absolutely essential that you make sure your website is the best of the best.

Branding your website is often the most difficult step in your product or service taking flight, professional web design, however, is no longer difficult to find! Thanks to companies centered around the creation of logos and branding you no longer have to suffer in the knowledge that your M.S. Paint logo just is not cutting it! Branding is an aspect of marketing and advertising; the two most important factors of a fledgling business or service taking flight. The first step in branding your website is to, well, make the website, duh! Once you have made the website you can contact potential graphic designers who will be able to assist you in your second step of moving on up into owning your own business.

Where Do I Start?

The first step is taking the incentive to create your own website, after of course coming up with a unique idea to you! Once you’ve got your website up and running, the next step is to contact a graphic designer who can brand your website with a unique logo that is entirely yours and not anybody else’s intellectual property! Once you’ve got your brand logo you will be instantly recognizable by your own personal hallmark. With your hallmark you are free to go out and network and advertise your company online, on social media, or in person, depending on your service. A unique brand name and logo is key to a brilliant, thriving business. Look at all of the companies you know, fast food and car manufacturers, they all have an instantly recognizable logo entirely unique to them that you could spot in a crowd of 1,000,000 other logos and brand names because it is eye-catching!

What Next?

Once you’ve everything prepared, you are ready to catch some attention! You will want to advertise your brand everywhere you possibly can; if you sell lawnmowers then you want to have social media personalities who review lawnmowers promoting your products, on the same edge of the coin if you are selling women’s clothes you want to have a woman who markets clothes for a living, to market your brand for you! Often bloggers and social media personalities will market and advertise your product for you for a small monetary payment; their brand will accentuate yours and you will end up with customers from them!

Be Unique!

I can’t stress this enough, it is very important to make sure that every single item you promote as part of your brand is unique, there is no point in advertising a brand that is a blatant hack of another more famous brand; you then will only draw contempt, and while they say no attention is bad attention, that is not true when it comes to your brand. You will be labeled a hack and be met contemptuously by potential buyers or other designers and brand owners. Be unique, be unique, be unique! It will help your brand thrive!

The post Branding Your New Website? – Here’s How appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

1. Have An Effective SEO Strategy

SEO is essential, not just for an e-commerce site, but for every type of website. Your site needs to be optimized to increase your chances of ranking higher, which translates into more sales and more traffic. 

This is among the best methods to make sure your site is successful. Unfortunately, there happen to be many elements involved when it comes to optimizing a site for the different search engines. If you have decided to try this on your own, it will take a lot of effort and time to find out about the “ins and outs”. Get started as soon as you can to ensure your site is optimized as quickly as possible. 

Another important element to keep in mind involves the speed of the site. Fast loading sites are vital. It helps to keep visitors engaged which increases the likelihood of converting these visitors into customers. It also forms a vital part of SEO and ranking, and the websites that load slowly will never rank well. 

Your web-hosting provider will also impact your performance greatly. To provide you with an idea on what to look for in a host, look at these reviews: GoDaddy review, iPage review, along with Web Hosting Hub Review. 

2. Create An Interesting Blog 

Blogging has turned into one of the more effective for online marketing as it is cost-effective and its appeal to targeted audiences. When your e-commerce website is selling specific items, it is easy to create your blog associated with your exact niche which then attracts the right audience to the blog. 

According to Jake Roberts, CMO of ecommerce store Orthotic Shop , blogging in an informative manner has allowed them to inform their customers about their orthotic products even during the current COVID-19 situation and in turn has helped their conversion rate as customers now have more knowhow about what they’re purchasing. 

So, the takeaway is once visitors land on your blog, make sure you give them the information that they need about the service or product you are currently selling. You should find it easy to convert these visitors into customers. This is a strategy that has already worked for many companies, making it a highly viable option. 

3. Make Use Of Promotions To Attract Consumers

For many years promotions have formed a part of marketing when it comes to new businesses. Even the years before the internet became flooded with e-commerce websites, a new business would advertise an opening sale or other types of promotions in order to attract people. 

This strategy also works well online. When you offer a sale or promotion, it can appeal to a much larger audience. Consumers are always attracted to good deals, so ensure your offer is something they can’t resist, and you will find that they will start flocking to your e-commerce site. 

4. Use The Social Media Channels

Social media websites can become a massive asset when it comes to establishing your presence online, as the potential is truly limitless. There are over a billion people that use these sites regularly and you can get in on the action when you advertise your business on these sites. 

If you are able to kick-off a successful media campaign, the results should be dramatic within a day or two. Social media marketing has also become very popular as it is usually for free, although setting aside a budget could make things a lot easier for you. 

You could start with posting links or publishing content that will attract the right audience. Make sure you direct these visitors to your website. There are tons of strategies that you can use when it comes to social media marketing. Once you have tried out a few you will soon find out which ones work the most effectively for your site. 

5. Paid Advertising For E-Commerce

Even though paid advertising is going to cost a bit of money, it is usually very effective, especially for a new site. If you are able to maintain conversion rates that are high, paid advertising could offer fantastic returns. 

For instance, Pay Per Click advertising will allow for a way for you to pay each time a person clicks on a link that leads back to your site. Once they land on your website, it is up to you to make sure your convert them. With a well-designed conversion process and user experience, you should see very positive returns within a short time. 

6. Get Your Product Or Service Reviewed

Another fantastic method to increase your visibility involves finding bloggers that write up reviews on products. Once you find them ask if they would be prepared to write reviews on your products directly on your site.

In most cases, if you offer a free sample or provide them with easy access to try your products out, they may be willing to cover your offering. If they write up great reviews, then their audiences are then exposed to what you have on offer, which increases the chances of these people visiting your site. 

7. Offer Free Samples

This is one of the strategies that many companies try to avoid, yet it is often very effective. If you need to prove to potential customers that the products that you sell are great, then provide them with samples and ask for honest feedback. If your products are as good as you say, these users will leave online reviews or spread the news via word-of-mouth. 

Final Thoughts

Every e-commerce site offers different product types, which means that some of the above-mentioned products may work better than others for your particular site. You should still keep all these tips in mind, and then decide on which ones will work best for your website.

The post Top Tips For E-Commerce Messaging on Social Media appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Inside the world of Instagram “likes”

The big problem, of course, is that the number of “likes” appearing next to any photo or video has become a metric of success for social media users. A photo, for example, is successful if it gets thousands of likes, but a complete failure if it only attracts a handful of likes. One the surface, this might seem to make a lot of sense. What could be more democratic than asking people to vote on whether or not content is good? In theory, this should encourage people to post the best possible content.

But here’s the thing: people have taken the concept of “likes” too seriously, and that has led to a lot of very negative behaviors across Instagram. One practice that particularly stands out here is the ease and availability of buying “likes” from third party companies. If you can’t get enough organic activity on your Instagram photos, then why not just pay a few bucks and buy up hundreds or thousands of likes and followers?

The habit of using “likes” to judge the relative success (or failure) of Instagram content can also lead to a lot of online bullying. Imagine a bunch of teenagers posting photos to Instagram and waiting for approval from the “cool kids,” only to find out that the queen bees or top jocks at the school have chosen to freeze them out by withholding “likes.” For young adults craving social status and social approval, that could be a huge hit to their self-esteem.

In fact, even among older users, many people simply delete any photo that does not get an arbitrary number of likes, all to create the overall impression that everything they post online is truly spectacular. (Oh, that photo of me post-workout still makes me look fat? Better delete it, and post an even better photo tomorrow!) Someone scrolling through their Instagram feed would only see a highly curated feed of photos with lots of likes.

A possible solution to the “like” problem

Instagram really isn’t re-inventing the wheel here when it comes to hiding likes. Instead of posting a real-time counter of how many likes a photo or video gets, it will simply state, “Liked by username and others,” where ‘username’ is the first person who liked the photo. The idea here is that users will not obsess over how many likes their photos are getting – as long as a photo gets two “likes,” it’s going to be just as impressive as a photo from an A-list celebrity that gets 10,000 “likes.”

At least, that’s the thinking over at Instagram HQ. But is really possible to re-engineer human social behavior so easily? For thousands of years, humans have been competing socially, looking for ways to raise themselves up and keep others down. If it’s not the “like” button, there’s bound to be some other social media feature that can provide a go-to metric for success. That’s not being cynical, that’s just recognizing what makes us human.

The post Will Hiding Likes Really Make the Internet a Better Place? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The pros of athletes as social influencers

There’s obviously a lot of good that can come about if top athletes lend their voice to important social and cultural issues. For example, consider the example of outspoken women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who has become an advocate of equal pay for women, as well as a supporter of improved race relations. As she noted in an interview following the epic women’s World Cup victory, all athletes have a responsibility to make the world a better place.

And, indeed, over the past five decades, athletes have played an important role in advancing social justice, improved race relations, and important democratic principles. Who can forget the iconic image of Olympic athletes raising their fists in support of black power back in 1968? Or how top athletes like Muhammad Ali have become spokespersons for human rights around the world? In addition, professional athletes can raise awareness about important health and social issues. If you’ve ever turned on a professional sports game and wondered why all the athletes were dressed in pink, then you can understand why visual imagery is so important when advocating for change.

The cons of athletes as social influencers

But what about the downside of athletes as advocates and influencers? Perhaps the best example here is former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has been embraced by brands like Nike at the same time that he has become arguably the most controversial figure in the world of professional sports. While actions such as refusing to sand for the national anthem might be based on deeply held beliefs, such actions are also deeply divisive to society as a whole.

And there’s also the issue of professional athletes opining on issues of which they might have little or no real knowledge. In the constant search for media publicity, some athletes take on causes that they might – or might not – really have any real knowledge about. On social media, it’s far too easy to like, share or comment on content in order to be “on trend.” Unfortunately, changing the color of your social media avatar is not going to change the world, even if you convince thousands of other people to do the same.

Ultimately, social media is a very powerful platform for athletes to make their views heard on social and cultural issues. Given their power as role models and 24/7 visibility on TV, the Internet or even in past years via fax machine, it’s easy to see how they can give momentum to any movement or raise awareness on any important issue.

Final thought

Just remember, however, that just because an individual is good at dunking a round ball or running extremely fast on a grass field does not mean that they need to be unquestioned or unchallenged. Just as athletes have a responsibility to make the world a better place, fans also have a responsibility not to engage in blind hero worship. Social media should be about dialogue, not just about following.

The post The Pros and Cons of Athletes as Social Media Influencers appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Twitter’s identity crisis

That’s a natural question to ask, given how often Twitter seems to experience existential angst about what it is, and why it even exists in the first place. Is it a communication platform for friends, a giant community to find like-minded users, a 24/7 breaking news platform, a place to find new trends andmemes, or a new platform for video entertainment? At various times, Twitter has claimed to be all of these things, and more. It’s no wonder people sometimes get so frustrated with Twitter: of all the most popular social media platforms, Twitter seems to be the one with the perpetual identity crisis.

At the same time, Twitter has been rocked by controversy over just how “toxic” it has become for users. Online cyber bullying is rampant on Twitter, and it is remarkable how nasty Twitter can get, especially when it comes to politics. Some days, it feels like Twitter is a festering hot mess of hate and harassment. And now Twitter seems to be locked in some sort of feud with the Trump administration, in which Twitter is being asked a lot of questions about why free speech is unwelcome, and why any views that do not coincide with those of the platform’s founders are hidden from sight (some might even say “censored”).

Designing a nicer, kinder Twitter

So one goal of the Twitter redesign is to introduce a nicer, kinder social media platform. The idea is to use subtle design tweaks to nudge people to discover what makes Twitter great – such as all the various communities of users who come to Twitter specifically to follow their favorite celebrities or athletes.

Another goal of the Twitter redesign is to get more people creating content. Most people, right now, are just passive consumers of content. So a few design tweaks – such as moving the search box right next to trending topics – might encourage people to create more content. So will the new Twitter bookmarks, which will enable people to save their tweets for later.

The future of Twitter

At the end of the day, however, it’s naïve to think that a few design tweaks will fundamentally change what happens on Twitter. A few of the really big changes that might make a difference to users – such as an EDIT button for tweets – are not in the mix right now. The new Twitter looks cleaner, simpler, less cluttered and more modern – but these are just incremental changes, and not signs that the Twitter bird has finally joined a new flock.

The post The Twitter Redesign Is About Way More Than Just a Better User Interface appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It all starts with the Facebook algorithm

In many ways, this pressure has occurred so subtly that you might not have even noticed it. It all started with tweaks to the Facebook algorithm, which began to prioritize visual imagery and videos over written content. So companies began producing beautiful infographics designed to look good on social media. They began posting photos with captions or inspirational messages that would be shared on Facebook. And they began posting YouTube clips.

Then, Facebook tweaked the algorithm again, to favor “native video” (i.e. video produced using Facebook) as well as “live” video. This again led to a change in content being produced by brands and small businesses – instead of embedding YouTube or Vimeo videos, they began to create video content with platforms like Facebook Live. Moreover, since Facebook appeared to favor longer-form video content, that meant that relatively scripted Facebook Live shows became popular as a way of connecting with fans and customers.

The pivot to video

And this so-called “pivot to video” is happening everywhere you look. Some of the most popular media outlets out there – MTV News, Sports Illustrated, The Huffington Post, Fox Sports and Vice – have all pivoted to video. They are firing teams of writers, de-emphasizing written content, and producing more and more content that Facebook “likes.” The big picture view is that Facebook wants people to produce original, 30-minute video shows that can become part of a Facebook TV programming schedule, and it needs all content producers to be on the same page.

It’s impossible to overstate the role of Facebook in this. Any move made by Facebook is going to have ripple effects with brands and publishers. That’s because any company or brand will only produce content that people are going to interact with via Facebook. That makes sense, right? Why would you spend time, energy and dollars producing content that’s dead on arrival?

Video engagement is way up

The numbers bear this out. According to a new survey from BuzzSumo, Facebook engagement is way down for anything that is not video. Since January 2017, the average engagement on Facebook posts from brands and publishers is down 20%. Video is holding steady, while the primary loss in engagement is coming from written content and visual content. During that same time period, the average video post received two times as much engagement as all other posts.

Put it all together and the message is clear: video is taking over the Web. The really smart companies out there have already internalized this message; they are now in the process of making all the necessary changes. In short, the pivot to video is in full swing.

The art of the authentic business video

As a result, video – and especially live video – needs to become part of your company’s content marketing strategy. If you want engagement, and if you want your posts to be viewed via Facebook organically, you need to be thinking in terms of video.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be slick, over-produced video content. What people want today on the Internet is empathy, transparency and authenticity. You have permission to be yourself in a business video. In fact, the more personality and authenticity that you can inject into the video, the better it will do on social media – and specifically, on Facebook.

The post Why Live Video Needs To Be Part Of Your Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Employers are using social media during the hiring process

First and foremost, recruiters are looking to avoid obvious hiring mistakes – such as people who are obnoxious trolls in their online lives. If you have a long track record of cyberbullying, for example, that’s going to raise a number of red flags for hiring managers. If someone is a bully online, aren’t they going to act the same way in the workplace? And if job candidates are routinely posting drunken photos of their latest weekend exploits, what does that mean for the way they will conduct themselves at the office or with clients?

And, secondly, recruiters are performing stealth background checks to see if your online profile matches up with everything you’ve put on your resume. For example, if you are positioning yourself as a “thought leader,” but you haven’t posted anything on LinkedIn in quite some time, or if you are trying to convince someone that you are an “online influencer,” but you have only a few scattered followers across social media, that might also raise some red flags.

Is social media exposing you in ways you never expected?

Viewed from this perspective, of course, it seems as though corporations are just doing their own share of due diligence, to make sure that they catch all the mistakes before they have a chance to embarrass a company later. The New York Times, for example, is still dealing with the awkward situation where they hired an editorial board member, and then only later discovered a series of racist tweets from a few years ago. Checking out a person’s Twitter profile is one way to protect yourself from potential liability.

However, what if you view it from another perspective – that companies and hiring managers are snooping around in your personal life, without your permission, and often without your knowledge?

So let’s pose an interesting scenario: what if you are a young woman applying for a job and the person in charge of hiring happens to run across your Facebook posts talking about a new child you are expecting 9 months from now? In the purely offline world, an interviewer would never be able to discriminate you because of gender. And they would certainly never be able to ask whether or not you were pregnant. However, social media opens the door to a new type of “shadow banning,” where you are disqualified for a job before you even have a chance to show up at an interview. Presumably, a racist hiring manager would be able to eliminate prospects purely on the basis of ethnicity or race.

Or, for example, what if you happen to be a passionate supporter of a certain politician or a certain political ideology – and your potential boss has very different ideas about politics? The fact that you have been tweeting or posting about politics might inadvertently disqualify you – or even lead to your dismissal on some other pretext.

Clean up your social media profile now

It’s clear that social media is now very much a minefield. The lesson is clear: the time to do a social media audit is now, rather than later. Take time to clean up any parts of your social media identity that you don’t want a future boss to know about – or at least make your profile as private as possible. In today’s digital world, you never really know who might be snooping around behind your back.

The post Why You Need To Do A Social Media Audit To Help Save Your Job appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

#1: Your blog is your piece of real estate on the web

If you only publish content on social networks like Facebook and YouTube, guess what? You are completely at the mercy of those social media giants. If Facebook makes a tweak to its algorithm, your content could forever disappear from users on Facebook – even those who have “liked” your page. And if YouTube decides to change the rules on how videos are monetized, you could suddenly find that your YouTube page is no longer relevant. Even worse, you might get forced to create types of content – such as long-form 30-minute videos – that simply aren’t a good match for your current resources.

But with a blog, you don’t have those same issues. You can control exactly what type of content appears on it, and you won’t be beholden to the Silicon Valley giants on how you can monetize it. Best of all, you can turn your website into a destination on the web. People coming to your corporate blog will also be stopping by to see what else your company offers. You won’t get that same experience on Facebook, where the goal is to keep you trapped inside the Facebook ecosystem.

#2: Your blog is a way to engage both prospects and customers

Blogging is all about engagement. Since you control the platform, you are unconstrained in how you can interact with customers. If you rely on Facebook, you are reliant on cookie-cutter templates where all content and all ads look the same. But with a blog, you can give full rein to your creativity as you engage both prospect and customers.

And all that engagement is key because it can help you better understand your customers. What are they looking for? What types of content resonate with them? What problems are they looking to solve? A blog can be a huge help in connecting and interacting with your customers.

#3: Blogs are more trusted and more credible than social media

In many ways, social media has been taken over by influencers, celebrities and hype artists. It seems like everybody is pitching, selling and promoting something. It’s no wonder people are starting to trust Facebook less and less – people are finally waking up to the fact that Facebook was created for advertisers, not for everyday users. The same goes for Instagram, which can seem like one long infomercial some days.

In comparison, blogs are viewed as places to find deep domain expertise, long thought leader pieces (not just 140 character fluff pieces), and in-depth reporting. The text-centric nature of blogs is what separates them from social media – you have much greater ability to tell the full story of your company and what it does, rather than just a “best of” summary that must be squeezed into a certain text limitation on social media.

Final Thought

As you can see, blogs are a great way to own your own space online. Having a company blog gives you the peace of mind that you can control your brand’s message, how your content is monetized and what types of advertising you can use on your site. Along the way, blogs can lead to a real boost in engagement and conversions – which makes them the perfect match for any company looking for incremental sources of growth.

The post Why Your Business Needs A Blog In Today’s Social Media World appeared first on Social Media Explorer.