Social Media Marketing & Management

Right Start Children’s Services Seeks Digital Marketing Support from DaBrian Marketing

June 19, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Reading, PA – June 19, 2017 – Right Start Children’s Services has enlisted the help of DaBrian Marketing Group to help parents and families find information about early intervention and pediatric therapy services available in Pennsylvania.

Many parents find their family therapists through a doctor’s recommendation. In a rush to secure help for their child, parents often accept the first recommendation they receive, sometimes traveling to a nearby county. While immediate care is always beneficial, finding the right therapist in the right location is essential for the health and development of a child.

Right Start Services came to DaBrian Marketing not in hopes of growing their business, but rather in search of a website redesign to provide easy access to relevant information and helpful resources to help parents make informed decisions. The experts at DaBrian Marketing responded with a search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing strategy, and social media consulting to help parents find appropriate service in their area.

Right Start Children’s Services has an existing presence on social media, specifically Facebook, which continues under the management of one of the company’s owners. DaBrian Marketing provides account optimization and recommendations for Right Start’s Facebook page, on-going consulting, and analytics reporting on their performance. DaBrian Marketing also assists with guiding Right Start to take the appropriate actions that will benefit their social media presence.

DaBrian Marketing performed extensive content optimization to help build awareness of Right Start’s brand, services, and service areas. They also gave the website a modern look and feel, with features like a sticky header, which is a common feature that allows the user to navigate the site without scrolling to the top to choose a different page or option. Other features, such as a Google map with polygons that indicate service areas, improve user accessibility by clearly displaying the appropriate information. The new Right Start Children’s Services site is mobile and tablet friendly so it fits correctly on screens of all sizes.

About Right Start Children’s Services

As an Early Intervention and Pediatric Therapy provider agency established in 2005, Right Start Children’s Services is a therapist owned and operated provider agency offering pediatric therapy services in a child’s home, school, daycare, or community setting. Services include behavioral therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, special instruction, and speech and language therapy. Right Start serves Berks County, Lebanon County, Lehigh County, Montgomery County, and Schuylkill County Pennsylvania. Right Start Children’s Services is located at 204 Cameron Drive in Douglassville, PA. For more information, call 1 (888) 532-4671 or visit rightstartservices.com.

About DaBrian Marketing

Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency. Focused on providing original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses, DaBrian Marketing Group offers a number of essential services, such as include content marketing, social media consulting, web hosting, local SEO, email marketing, digital branding, search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising, web design, web analytics, social media marketing, and more. For more information about DaBrian Marketing Group, located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201 in Reading, Pennsylvania, visit dabrianmarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.

Nonprofit Marketing Tips for 2017

February 27, 2017 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Nonprofits have several challenges in attracting individuals for their causes and converting those individuals into donors. To successfully promote and supply aid to those causes, nonprofits’ marketing efforts need consistent branding, effective use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and efficient use of marketing budgets to grow donations.

Based upon the economic climate and the job market, getting millennials and other individuals to donate to your nonprofit will become increasingly challenging without the following tools.

Build Your Nonprofit Brand

There are so many great nonprofits that it can be difficult for yours to stand out. Building and establishing your brand will help. Start by defining your nonprofit. Clearly state what makes your organization unique:

Why should people donate time and resources to your cause?
How do you emotionally or personally connect with your donors?
How do you directly affect your cause?

Answering these questions will build awareness and credibility for your valuable service and distinguish you to donors, everywhere. Once your brand is built, all parts must be consistent within your disseminated content – your flyers, social media posts, and videos. Live it and show it!

Master Your CRM & Database of Donors & Volunteers

Email marketing continues to be an effective marketing channel for nonprofits. People like to see positive messages from companies that do good work. To get the most out of your email marketing, organize your CRM database to personally reach out to donors and volunteers.

Don’t just send mass emails; make them count by generating unique interactions with individuals through certain segments of your audience. Identify what information resonates with these individuals to provide them with relevant information.

TIP: Personalizing your message to an individual will make her/him feel more connected to your cause.

Direct Mail to Make a Direct Impact

Direct mail isn’t dead! According to Inman, baby boomers have a high direct mail response rate. It’s worth noting that this generation also controls 70% of all disposable income. So, they have the money to donate to your nonprofit – don’t miss this opportunity!

Use your CRM to measure responses and limit direct mail to audiences that are more likely to take action. In other words: target your direct mail to those people that are going to make your nonprofit an effective source of aid for your cause.

Grow Your Online Fundraising

Social media and Google for Nonprofits are great opportunities to increase your online fundraising through awareness and meaningful interactions. You can bring your nonprofit marketing story to life with YouTube, Google One Today, and Google Earth Reach.

These platforms allow you to create valuable relationships with like-minded individuals from anywhere at any time. Share and connect your online fundraising across the globe.

Measure Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Market Smarter

Focus on measuring the ROAS of your marketing and fundraising campaigns. If a campaign didn’t yield results to justify the spending or effort, consider changing the approach or discontinue that campaign in the future.

With continuous shifts in demographics and consumer behavior, you’ll need to make informed decisions on where to allocate your time and money for long-term success. When you consistently measure the performance of your efforts through your ROAS, you will stay alert to those shifts.

What marketing struggles does your nonprofit consistently face? Tell us in the comments, below! While you’re at it, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

Combine Your SEO & Social Media Strategy To Maximize Success

February 6, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

In the past, both social media and SEO were worked on in silos. SEO was primarily focused on technical improvements and on-page optimization while social was (and often still is today) not even considered a part of the strategic marketing plan. To maximize your digital marketing efforts, SEO and social media need to be in a committed, strategic relationship.

1. Social Signals Are A Ranking Factor

As the use of social media continues to grow, so does the influence it has on search visibility (the likeliness of being found within search results). In 2016, Google and Twitter agreed to make a deal that now gives tweets a prominent position within the SERPs (search engine results page). Additionally, Facebook and (especially) Google + both show up within Google’s organic search results. This not only means that you need to be active on these major platforms but also that it’s imperative to optimize your accounts.

Create relevant posts to reflect your strategy (using the same keywords, message, and tying them all together).

The image below shows social media presence amongst Google’s organic search results.

Search engines not only take into account being listed on these social platforms – they also evaluate your authority. A company with millions of followers receives stronger social signals than a company with a few hundred. With that being said, search engines aren’t stupid. Social media metrics can be easily manipulated and search engines know when that happens. For example, search engines can detect the quality of your followers. This means buying 100,000 proxy Twitter followers will not do much.

The best approach is to build your following organically. Keep in mind that this takes time to do it right.

2. People Are Showing Love, Love Them Back

Your business’ digital presence is not limited to your website; it’s throughout the entire internet. People are talking about your business and their conversations have a direct impact on your efforts. You need to be a part of the discussion. This is where both SEO and social media come into play (in holy matrimony).

With SEO, your company will have complete access and control of your local listings, some of which incorporate popular review systems (Google My Business, Yelp, etc). With social, you’ll interact – through comments, likes, shares, and retweets – with the actual people that use those popular review systems. Through proper management, you’ll see when anyone mentions your company’s name (even when you are not directly tagged in the post).

Facebook also has a popular review system. Most of the time, if a consumer is unsatisfied, he or she will immediately go to social media to complain or write a review. 90% Of Customers Say Buying Decisions Are Influenced By Online Reviews. Not monitoring and responding to them is a huge missed opportunity.

3. Social Sharing is Caring

In terms of outreach: The goal of SEO is to acquire more high-quality links and increase visibility for new/existing traffic, lead conversion, and content exposure. The goal of social media is to engage with your community, connect with new audiences, and increase your brand presence.

Now, as social media and SEO have begun to blur the lines of separation, these both have been somewhat combined, naturally.

As opposed to traditional, and often ineffective, outreach methods – emails or contact submissions – a more modern approach is connecting with target audiences via social. By creating these social relationships, you’ll not only know which of your followers to send your content to, but you also enhance the probability of them sharing and reposting it. While social links do not carry the same link juice that highly-reputable sites do, it does increase your content’s overall exposure. This increases the chance of reaching other industry influencers and succeeds in showing you’re a leader in your industry.

Since it was shared by their peers, those influencers are more likely to share it on their site or blog. It also shows that you care when your audience engages with you and you care about building relationships with them.

4. Your Social Audience Helps Shape Your Content

SEO and content marketing are not all about just search trends, volume, and other metrics. It also has to do with actually producing content your audience gives cares about. Sure, you could look at historical data to see what has traditionally performed well (or not so well) to develop your content. But, that will always leave you one step behind if this is the ONLY method you use.

You need NEW content, too.

With social media, you should stay up with the latest trends, events, and news, as well as monitor the type of content your audience is interested in. On top of this, you can evaluate what’s working or not working for your competitors. This information will allow you to craft content that is timely, meaningful, and strategic to your users. In doing so, you’ll see engagement increase (comments, sharing, and contact submissions) and you’ll appear higher in the rankings for producing fresh, relevant content.

One simple way to view trending topics is to see what’s trending on Twitter.

5. Get Engaged To Your Community With Social & Local SEO

Businesses, especially small ones, can not succeed without the support of their community. This applies to the digital landscape, as well. In terms of SEO, the impact of your local area has never been greater. Major search engine’s – such as Google’s and Bing’s – algorithms have shifted towards more personalized results with a heavy emphasis on locality.

Aside from maintaining an accurate profile within the local listings, it is also extremely beneficial for your business to produce both localized content and social posts. Create blogs and other web pages that speak directly to your local audience. Then, utilize social media to disseminate it to local businesses and influencers (news reporters, bloggers, or those active in the community). This will increase not only the local discussion around your business but also the likelihood of earning local links. All of these signals will improve your ranking position within the organic search results.

The image below shows a blog post from a staple restaurant in West Reading, Pa, Say Cheese!, and a fellow DaBrian Marketing client. The blog highlights the restaurant, it’s history, future plans, and the announcement of their new website.

Tying Your Efforts Together

Your SEO and social media efforts need to be tied together to maximize efficiency. But, why stop there? For your digital marketing plan to be truly effective, you need to make sure all of your efforts are tied together. This includes your PPC (Pay per Click) advertising, web design, content marketing, email marketing, strategy, and your overall digital brand, in addition to SEO and social media. Your mindset needs to shift from different departments working independently to your business functioning collectively as a team, allowing to not let anything fall through the cracks.

Need someone to align your SEO and social efforts to help generate leads?

Why the Financial Industry Needs to Invest in Social Media

January 31, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Social media’s original purpose was for friends and family to stay connected with one another. Since its birth, it has evolved into more than just a way of communicating. It’s an effective medium to get in front of your customers. Often, banks, wealth management firms, and insurance companies skip out on this marketing opportunity because of the fear of breaking regulations with compliance. Do not fear compliance. With your own policy and social media strategy, you’ll soon be adding another powerful marketing asset, connecting with new potential customers, and having more people walk through you door.

Is it actually worth the risk?

Yes. The average person maintains more than 5 social media platforms. Millennials specifically use it when they wake up, multiple times throughout the day, during their downtime, and right up to the moment they fall asleep. If they’re using it, you need to use it, too. This group is quickly gaining purchasing power. Get in front of them before they make the final decision on opening a checking/saving account or gaining financial advice from one of your competitors. Yahoo! states, “50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media network.” Your presence on social is critical to staying relevant in today’s digital world.

How to Start

Many banks and firms have had many mergers and acquisitions. So, there may be social media accounts associated with previous company names that lead to your current website, address, or phone number. Gain access, merge your pages, or delete old accounts that have nothing to do with your current brand. Not only do you need to think about the business’ accounts, but some employees may be marketing themselves through social media. If you do not have someone monitoring, you have no insight into what your employees are saying (social’s not just about your customers).

Once you have the appropriate channels, you’ll need to decide what you’re goal is for them. Obviously, gaining more customers for your business is one of them. But, this may not be the true purpose of your pages. Goals may include to quantify content to a dollar amount, to educate your followers, to recruit, or to provide faster customer service. Defining this will help you get started on the type of content you will be providing and give you a clear vision of where you are heading.

Posting Without Fear of Compliance

The FINRA, the SEC, FFIEC, and the FDA will need to know about your social media channels and you know they will be auditing your content. Creating a standard strategy for you and your employees to abide by will help you to avoid violating any regulatory guidelines while maintaining full control on all content disseminated online. Setting these standards on what you expect to see will leave anyone with admin access in a comfortable position for posting onto social media. Avoid the madness, completely, and never have an issue with compliance.

Get to Know Your Customers

Monitor the conversations that are happening about your brand. The first place people go to complain, to brag, and to share their opinions is a social media account. You’re leaving your reputation in the hands of others without any say. Be a part of the conversation. If a negative comment occurs, be the first to respond. Having a social voice will not only help your credibility; you’ll soon truly get to know your customers. What are their interests, hobbies, locations, and languages? What do they like or not like about you? Where did they come from or go after interacting with your brand? Answering these questions will eventually help you in all areas of marketing for your company. If you want customers to invest their time and resources into you, you need to invest in them.

Working With a Social Media Marketer

We’ll do what we need to in order for you to have peace of mind about your new venture. We’ll help you educate your employees – what they’ll need to look out for, how to build those relationships, themselves, on their own channels, and the appropriate language and wording. We’ll thoroughly explain the strategy to leave no one questioning any part of it. We’ll help you gain access to all of your previous channels and secure each page. Our social media management tools have built-in compliance features that will help us all avoid disasters. Most importantly, we will create a crisis management procedure if a problem were to occur. The combination of a social media marketing team and a compliance officer will allow your content to be accurate and entertaining for your followers. (Yes, entertaining. Your boring content won’t get you anywhere. We’ll give you a personality compared to your standard legal jargon.)

Example of Financial Companies Utilizing Social Right

We understand the uncertainty you may feel about utilizing social media marketing. There’s the pressure of legal limitations and costly violations if an error occurs; but, you must soon realize the pressure is even greater to be active on social media. You’ll soon be a forgotten face in a crowd of your competitors without it.

Learn what is being said and what needs to be said. Let’s build our relationship so we can help you build one with your customers. We know you have questions, so ask away in the comments below!

National and Local Companies That Excel on Social Media

January 24, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat. Your customers are on them, every day. Are you connecting with them? Don’t lose out on valuable interactions. Check out this list that we made of companies that exemplify social media marketing best practices.

Sharing (Cute) Stories on Social

Animal Rescue League of Berks County – @BerksARL

Stories that accompany images are always important for Facebook. Users have the privilege of extended text in posts on Facebook. The Animal Rescue League of Berks County uses this privilege, well. They know how to stop scrollers in their tracks (who doesn’t stop to look at adorable animals? ? ??). They emotionally attach users to their images with personal, stories about the animals in each photo.

Wendy Isn't a Girl to Mess With

Wendy’s – @Wendys

The best part of Wendy’s social media presence is that they’re actually present.. They consistently post relevant content that directly communicates with their target audience. And, they respond to users that mention them in posts or ask questions. This often results in hilarity for the rest of us. Take a look at this article about an interaction on Twitter for a perfect example. Wendy’s social media marketing emphasizes the power of relationships. It is as if Wendy, herself, talks to people. And, it gets people to come to their restaurants.

Protecting and Connecting

Exeter Police Department – @ExeterTownshipPD

This local police department expresses regular updates that lighten the mood of stigmatized work. Exeter P.D. makes positive impressions on users through jokes and creative photography. They also provide relevant information about the current activity of Exeter Township. Videos and imagery offer safety advice and comment on their own workplace culture. Exeter P.D.’s posts make people want to connect with them. Even in the serious business of law enforcement, we can always enjoy a good laugh!

Getting a Slice of the Social Pie

Mimmo’s – @Mimmosrestaurant

A focus on social media marketing gets people to Mimmo’s for popular events. Mimmo’s knows it’s own brand: a great place for lots of people to gather and celebrate the Super Bowl, New Year’s Eve, and family occasions. They capitalize on the changing seasons with posts about reservations for holidays like St. Valentine’s Day. They also sponsor posts through Facebook to expand their reach to the local community. This naturally gets more customers to the restaurant. It helps that their food and drinks are pretty good, too.?? ?

Spreading Smiles Physically and Digitally

Grove Dental – @GroveDentalWyomissingPA

You might not expect a dental practice to connect with users in a human way through their posts. But, Grove does. Highlights of employees’ achievements communicate their expertise. Posting articles about dental health captures the attention of users that need information. Grove also keeps their social media fun and entertaining. They make the dentist’s office social – not scary. Promotion of their social media through business cards and employee-referrals only brings in more customers. And, yes. We do Grove’s social media marketing. #shamelessplug

Getting Shredded on Snapchat ?

Shredz – Shredzsnap

This national company is the proud and only entry on this list that capitalizes on the power of Snapchat. Shredz specializes in fitness and workout supplements. For an active company, an active and mobile social medium is necessary. They use Snapchat to give momentary updates on relatable moments that their target audience experiences on a daily basis. They announce sales for their customers via the app to capture users at any time, anywhere.

Learn from these companies:

Tell stories to your audience – keep it relatable and relevant.
Capture users’ attention with videos and imagery.
Create consistent posts and always respond to comments and questions, ASAP.
Communicate your company’s culture with humor or professionalism.
Be relevant to the changing needs of your customers.
Promote your posts to expand reach across your region.
Connect with mobile users instantaneously with opportunities for interaction.

Have any questions? Ask the certified members of our team. Place your comment, below, and we’ll get right back to you. Let’s start a conversation!

Also, check out our own social media: @DaBrian Market on Twitter and DaBrian Marketing Group on Facebook.

Which Social Media Sites Are Right For Your Business?

September 27, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

For 2016, Statista reports that 78% of U.S. Americans have a social media account. You can assume that most of your customers, clients, and employees are all part of this percentage (because really, who doesn’t actually have a Facebook?). So, reaching your customers through social media marketing should be easy… right? Not exactly. Most of us aren’t on every social media platform, so picking any random one will not guarantee you’ll reach the right people. Utilize the ones that your industry’s audience frequently uses while creating a social media marketing strategy to raise brand awareness and connect with your customers.

Let’s find out. Are you using the right social media channels for your industry?

Home and Garden

Within the home and garden industry, your job is to create a beautiful space for your customers. This should easily be carried over onto your social networks. A unique social channel that works extremely well to aid in becoming a thought-leader of this industry is Pinterest. Pinterest is essentially a way to organize your innovative ideas and thoughts. Whether you design home decor or landscaping, you can create specific Pinterest Board’s based on certain areas of the home or by specific locations. Better Homes and Gardens has created 185 today of everything from holiday boards, to casserole dishes, to one called “Let’s Get Organized.” Users can follow the page itself or only the boards that pertain to them.

Hospitality

Instagram works great for companies who offer entertainment, lodging, and tourism locations. It is used for sharing a feed of videos and pictures that can be edited directly on the application. One piece of advice when creating a strategy for Instagram is to maintain the same look throughout each post. This could be one particular filter or border for every picture you post. While this is not essential, it does help with brand consistency. Staples, an office supplies company, simply adds their branded Staples’ name to the right-hand corner of each image.

Non-Profit

Most non-profits have a lot of freedom on how to promote their services. Snapchat offers a lot of room for customization and building brand awareness that can definitely be taken advantage of. First off, a non-profit location could design a geotag that can be used by its guests when they visit. This will allow friends and families to see where they are volunteering and visiting. Another idea would be to allow a few departments access to the Snapchat account. If it is an Animal Rescue League, the head of the cat room, kennels, and any other department can easily share the adoptable animals and the day-to-day routine of what it’s like to work there.

Ecommerce and Retail

Ecommerce and retail businesses where you are selling a variety of products should be simple to run Instagram, Snapchat, or Pinterest for. Michael Kors, an apparel and accessory retail store, sticks to a common theme for a certain period of time. The company will take a seasonal color or pattern and promote it in roughly 8-12 photos before moving on to another one.

Social Media Marketing Takeaways

While this blog is focused on one particular social media platform per industry, you should never only devote your time to only one social media platform. Take the time to create a plan for a few social media accounts that will work best for you company and will reach your target audience. Common social platform, such as Facebook and Twitter, are two platforms that any industry should be utilizing since they are the most common for all demographics and businesses.

If you do not know how to begin with social media marketing or have any other questions, let us know in the comments below, or contact us today!