Social Media Marketing & Management

Top Trends for Social Media in 2016

January 25, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

With nearly 2 billion active social media users and with nearly 9 out of 10 companies in the US utilizing social media for marketing purposes, it is almost impossible for your business in today’s world to not be apart of the social media world in some regards. Here are some top trends for social media that could help to increase your company’s overall goals.

Allocate More To Video In 2016

In case you are living under a rock, social video exploded in 2015. Last year Facebook users around the world posted 75% more video than they did in the previous year, and with SnapChat tripling its daily views since May and reaching 6 billion daily video views, video is now one of the strongest contenders in 2016. Those numbers will steadily increase throughout the year and with most social networks like Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter seeing increases in 2015, other social networks are hopping on board. It was reported that Pinterest could also be hopping on the video advertising bandwagon in 2016.

Not only have video views and shares exploded on these social networks, but the use of video for advertising purposes has also steadily increased. A video can engage with your current audience and potential customers like never before. If video is not somewhat apart of your content strategy in 2016, it might be time to re-evaluate and allocate more efforts in creating relevant video content.

Allocate More Resources and Budget To Social Media

With the increase of users on every social media channel, advertisers are taking notice and increasing their advertising spend on these social channels. Not only are advertisers spending more but they can reach their audience like never before. Now advertisers can not only set up their target audience using their age and gender, but they can also target their audience by interest and location. The ability to now target your audience more specifically can help your business get the most value from your ad spend by reaching only the people that matter to you.

Employee Advocacy

For larger companies having a team dedicated to marketing and social media can have its benefits, but any company, no matter the size can benefit from your employees being advocates for your company. When it comes to sharing the latest and greatest news about your company and or products or services, who knows your brand better than your employees? Content first relayed by your company and then shared by your employees has the potential to reach more current and potential customers. But be careful, you will want to connect with your employees who will be doing this and create viable content for them to reuse so that your brand message and the image will stay consistent.

Communicate With Your Customers

With so many people on social media, your company can respond to questions, comments, or concerns that your customers have in a timely fashion. Even if you have an angry customer commenting or posting a question, engaging with that customers and staying on top of comments and questions will get your company out in front of those negative comments. Not only does this engagement help to answer your customer’s questions, but it can also help to create meaningful relationships with your customers and your timely response could have the potential to create a customer for life. These few social media trends in could help improve your company’s reach, brand awareness, and overall goals. Will your company be on board?

For more trends or information regarding social media, Follow Us on our Social Media Channels or Contact Us today!

Facebook Search Or Facebook Site Search?

November 18, 2015 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Facebook Search Or Facebook Site Search? You be the Judge!

After receiving a few questions from our client and prospects on Facebook Search. I wanted to provide some information about Facebook Search, impact to businesses, and opportunities.

Read Transcript

Danny Laws, principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group advertising agency in Reading, PA. We do some work in the digital space. Obviously we get a number of questions from our clients as it pertains to conferences that they attend, things that they read, those types of components. More recently we got a call from one of our clients as it pertains to Facebook and Facebook search. It prompted me to put together a brief response to educate those individuals that may or may not be aware of the capabilities on Facebook more specifically. For those of you that don’t know there’s a great opportunity for you to take a look at those pieces, take a look at what’s out there in this space, and connect with a number of different people via Facebook.

One of the things that it’s available on Facebook, and I speak to that and I really trying to show some of that, is people say that Facebook is a search engine. I’ve heard that from a number of clients asking that question and positioning it in that way, because that’s how others that they’ve spoken to, things that they’ve read, conferences that they’ve gone to have positioned Facebook as a search engine. My personal opinion is that Facebook does not operate as a search engine in its entirety because it does not index all of the information, web pages, what have you in the World Wide Web that’s accessible for users. I would however consider Facebook an internal site search component that allows you to search internally inside Facebook to assess information, post videos, what have you, in light of the most recent changes.

Why does it matter to your businesses is the biggest question that I pose to a lot of our clients. One of the big things that I see as an opportunity is very much a potential increase in visibility and creating that exposure around post, around Facebook likes, around Facebook pages in itself, as well as the mobile accessibility. The opportunities here for businesses are very much around relevant content, timely post, whether be seasonal or event based or what’s trending and what’s hot right now in that very moment, and at the same time going back to the mobile components. Facebook pages are making sure that that information is live, relevant, and consistent with your target audience.

If you’re a business that you’re leveraging it within the ability to talk about offerings, to talk about subject matter expertise, to reinforce yourself as a thought leader in this space, let’s be clear, that needs to be done in moderation. Not simply posting about yourself 24/7. Not sharing anyone else’s content. That’s not a successful way to leverage social media in my opinion or the opinion of most of the staff here at DaBrian Marketing Group. But we break it down to the old school rule of thought of rule of thirds and probably expand upon that a little bit more.

The other thing as far as Facebook searches, how can it impact your business? I think post, check-ins for local businesses, and extending that reach and visibility for Facebook via your friends, the public, and for public information photos, what have you, as far as making sure that you can get that message out, clearly differentiate your products and services, and better position your brand within a local market and within your Facebook audience.

The other piece that I want to speak to here is how you align that back to the strategy. If you’re doing Facebook and you’re promoting on Facebook and you’re selling on Facebook it’s got to be a part of a comprehensive strategy which generally goes back to awareness, brand awareness, leads, sales. I’m over simplifying. One of the things that you have to make sure that you do as far as aligning back to those strategic points and those strategic goals and objectives that you talk about as a business is making sure that there’s a tie back as a very specific metric or a group of metrics associated with Facebook to gauge where you’re at with that performance.

Clearly as far as awareness you might look at post, page views, incremental store visits, website activity from Facebook as a generic example. Leads, are you getting contact us, are you getting calls, are you getting event signups, are you getting email subscriptions off of Facebook from the activity and the information that you’re disseminating to your target audience.

Then the last piece here is also that sales component, so Facebook being that it allows you to pat Facebook search and search and look at information. You also have an opportunity for e-commerce and e-commerce categories on Facebook. All of these components in my opinion will have a trickle-down effect across the board within Facebook search. When we talk about Facebook search it should contribute to high level awareness, it should contribute to lead generation to some degree, and it should contribute to sales via Facebook or attributing back to Facebook search or Facebook itself as part of your post, as part of your information that you talked about.

Now in light of that there are definitely some other components that you want to make sure that you take a hard look at and make sure you look at these things quite simply as far as sharing information. Now when you get to Facebook you get to this as a whole and you start to look at what’s available there from a Facebook perspective, as you can see what I’ve done here is very much a search on advertising agencies from where I sit.

Now what I will say to you is that I’ve done a search for advertising agency from my geographic location. Obviously DaBrian Marketing Group shows up there, but there are a number of other agencies within my geographic footprint that have Facebook pages that are not showing up. You need to keep that in mind as you look at Facebook search, that it is merely … It’s also tied to the individual to some degree. As you can see from this search that I’ve done that when I put an agency obviously DaBrian Marketing Group shows there, but there are other elements that are there as well that you definitely want to take into account.

The other thing that I would recommend is taking a look at the information that’s accessible, that’s clearly accessible on Facebook in itself. Facebook has a lot of information as far as what’s there. As you can see it gives you an opportunity for Facebook search to search. Is better than ever according to them. You also have some components as far as how you can search via mobile and see that information. Then finding post that you’ve seen previously on Facebook based upon keywords, phrases, what have you, however you want to define it, and those types of components that you may have remembered when you saw a previous post, and also being able to look and see what’s beyond your news feed is important.

I think that’s where the opportunity presents itself from a business perspective, that if you’ve optimized your Facebook pages, if you’re consistently in this space, if you’re disseminating relevant content that is impactful for your target audience I think that there’s a greater probability for you to see success in that space.

With that being said what I’d like to get across today first and foremost, Facebook search is going to be an opportunity for businesses but it’s going to be dependent upon having a clear strategy, having clear metrics to measure those components, aligning what you’re doing to achieve a goal, whether it be brand awareness, lead generation, what have you, and that with the understanding that Facebook’s search is more of an internal site search functionality and or capability than it is a search engine in itself.

With that being said I wish you the best of luck on social media. Keep an eye out for an updated post on our blog page where we’ll add a few informative links to support the Facebook search component and how others are seeing Facebook search within the industry. Thank you very much. Hope you have a good day and good luck.

The Social Media Metrics That Matter

September 16, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Today, social media is growing and changing the way people and businesses do business. 81% of small and medium sized business are now on social media. With so much emphasis on social media, your company should want to keep up with all of the latest trends and set business goals for your social media, like brand awareness and sales and goals for your and your social media metrics. Your business may not have the time or manpower to keep up with the latests trends or to keep up with your followers, so you may need to hire an agency to fulfill all of your business’ social media needs. When you begin looking for an agency or someone to manage your company’s social media accounts, there are many things you want to look for but be aware when you are doing your research because you may become victim of perception vs. reality.

Perception vs. Reality

When it comes to social media, perception vs. reality claims many victims without them even knowing it. When looking for an agency to manage your social media accounts the perception may be that one agency has this many “likes” or followers or another agency who does the exact same thing, but they have fewer “likes” or followers. Does that mean that this one agency is better than the other or better equipped to get the job done just because they have more “likes” or followers?

It is important for business owners to understand that choosing an agency for what they offer you on the surface (perception) may not be what you want and may not be the best for your business. If you choose the agency with more “likes” or an agency for their name, you might be paying for what you think they can do for you on the surface, but you are not truly getting what you asked or for or what your business needs.

Risk vs. Return

Risk and return also come into play when dealing with social media. The risk for a company may include the financial cost of Social Media Management vs. the return of acquiring a lot of followers or the return of acquiring a few followers that interact with the company and are customers.

The Metrics that Matter

All business have goals and objectives, and when your business is looking for someone to manage your social media accounts you want to look for an agency that aligns with your business goals. Sure an agency can help your business “pay” for likes on your social media platforms, but is that what you really want?

You should look at an agency’s engagement rates, rather than select someone based on how many “likes” or followers they have. These numbers should matter more to you because it shows that they are posting more relevant content, reaching their target audience, and are making a bigger impact.

Even though most people want to believe perception vs. reality, trust the experience, partnerships, engagement of an agency and their ability to deliver on your goals and do not base your decision by what it appears they can do for you.

Are you a victim of perception vs. reality? Comment below to share your insights!

Expand Your Home and Garden Business With Digital Marketing

July 29, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Digital Marketing comes in all shapes and sizes. For those with businesses in the home and garden field, there lies a recognizable opportunity for your business to grow and bloom with digital marketing. Email marketing, Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, and social media can all positively impact your business if you develop the right niche and utilize the right tools to do so.

How Can Email Marketing Help with Sales?

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing yields an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States. By implementing email marketing, you can reach all of your current and potential customers while sharing the latest and greatest news and promotions your company is offering. Say you’re a lawn care business and your company is promoting a seasonal special, “20% off Lawn Care Services.” By adequately utilizing email marketing, your current and potential customers will be able to access your promotion all within the click of a button. Along with sharing promotions, emails marketing allows you to successfully measure your campaign and the performance on lead generations or sales.

Are you taking advantage of all Social Media has to offer?

If you are not taking advantage of social media, then you need to get into the game! Social media is the quickest and most cost effective way to share new products and showcase projects or work that you have just completed. Social media allows your business to directly interact and engage with customers, which now goes both ways as well. Your customers are able to reach you with any of their questions in a timely fashion. The personal touch you include in your social media pages will help humanize your brand and allow you to reach a whole new audience.

Can PPC help attract the right audience?

Email marketing and social media are great for showcasing your promotions or new products, but if you want to attract customers searching online for specific products or services you offer, then Pay per Click (PPC) is the way to go. Pay per Click (PPC) allows you to connect with the right customers across all platforms and devices, makes sure your ads are shown in the right place at the right time, and easily tracks and measures how your campaign is performing.

Whether you want to promote a special offer or showcase a finished renovation, having an effective digital marketing strategy can help your business blossom into a marketing producing machine!

Contact us and learn how DaBrian Marketing can help your business flourish.

7 Deadly Sins of Social Media for Banks

June 8, 2015 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

A recent American Banker article discussed opening up the opportunities for employees to engage with customers. I was surprised that this was the position of the article because financial institutions, in general, tend to be very risk adverse. I understand utilizing social media to communicate with customers, but I think there need to be some controls. With that said, I give you my 7 deadly sins of social media for banks.

Lusting for “Likes” without the Bank’s Strategy

Before opening communication on social media for bank employees and customers, it’s important to recognize the need for a social media strategy and why social media matters. Profitability is a major concern in this competitive market, and social media can help financial service institutions differentiate themselves and communicate with customers on a level they’re accustomed to. For a bank to allow employees and customers to interact via social media, there needs to be a clear strategy and metrics to determine whether or not it’s having an impact on deposit accounts, loan applications, improving customer service, and generating revenues.

Failing to Acknowledge Competition (Pride)

With all the potential mergers and acquisitions banks go through, the market has become increasingly competitive. Not looking into the competitive landscape of how to effectively use social media can lead to disaster. There are a few financial services institutions (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and US Bank) that banks can take a note from on how to implement social media best practices and still remain compliant. Leverage the learning from local credit unions to connect with the local markets is a good place to start.

Not Preparing for the Rage of Employees & Customers

Not all employees or customers will remain happy with the bank so failing to prepare for the wrath of an unhappy employee or an unsatisfied customer may lead to unwanted national media attention. I would highly recommend that banks develop social media policies and procedures to manage employees social media engagement on behalf of the institution. It is also wise to clearly communicate what customers should expect and not expect via social media from the bank. A good example of this is Bank of America which offers guidelines and terms of use specifically for their social media community. These social media guides should help you to limit the risk and plan accordingly for the wrath of unhappy individuals or sensitive information.

Starting with More than Banks can Handle (Gluttony)

With all the social media networks out there, which one makes sense for the business? Opening up every social media platform to employees and customers is simply not a good idea. I would highly recommend that you start with one platform at a time and prioritize which social media platforms make sense based on your strategy. Each social media platform has unique aspects and as an industry that is generally slow to implement change getting a handle on each platform and understanding how customers engage will be critically important, so don’t bite off more than you can chew at one time!

Excessive Promotion of Your Bank and Financial Services

Contrary to popular belief your social media accounts should promote more than your bank, credit union, wealth management, and products or services. I would recommend the social media rule of thirds. ne-third of the social media content should promote the bank, one-third should share industry information and one-third should be based upon interactions and socializing with customers or potential customers. If you’re not following the rule of thirds or something similar you’re simply being greedy and tantalizing your community which will end with customers disengaging.

Being Lazy on the Measurement

The real question is how do you plan to measure the effectiveness that social media is having on growing deposit accounts, loan applications, and improving customer service? For years, I’ve witnessed banks and credit unions being really lazy on measuring the return on investment for their marketing dollars, especially dollars spent on social media marketing! There is a cost associated with having employees engage in this process and there should be a return on that investment. For full visibility into the return on investment, banks need to implement web analytics solutions and track across mobile banking apps, loan or member application process, and customer support tickets. Without doing so, there will be limited visibility into the overall impact that social media is having on the deposit accounts and lending.

Envy of the Competitor’s Social Community without Context

So the competitor has 1 billion likes and a trillion followers but how many members of their social media community interact with the brand, share information, use the specific social network, and are advocates for the company or product/service offerings? Don’t be jealous of the number of metrics without understanding the context of how they were acquired or the level of interaction. You can purchase Twitter followers but are they real followers? For example, you can have 300 followers for with a 50% interaction rate or you can have 1000 with just a 10% interaction rate.

Conclusion

It’s important to the financial service industry to embrace the idea that social media to communicate with customers, members, or investors but it should be aligned with the strategy and add value to the potential customers as well as the organization. The social media strategy and value of social media must be clearly established prior to opening social media communications. The expectations should be clearly defined for customers and employees to put things into perspective and avoid the 7 deadly sins of social media for financial services organizations.

Social Media 2015 Scouting Report: Instagram

February 18, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Kevin Systrom has certainly gotten where he wanted to be in four short years (or 104 in social media years) since founding Instagram. The domination of visual content platforms has forced the re-visitation of many a social media strategy for marketers. Now the only question is: what’s Kevin got up his Prada-conceived sleeve?

It was the biggest social headline of 2014: “It’s Official: Instagram Is Bigger Than Twitter”. We all read it, we all did a double-take, and we all had the same reaction: “Wow – well, actually… I guess I could see it”. Of course we could all see it. Instant user gratification (following Twitter’s recipe) mixed with virtually 100% visual presentation (with maybe 1% left for the hashtag game) – Instagram couldn’t have any more #swag if they tried.

But (unfortunately for the English language) swag WORKS in the social space, and it works well. Appealing to the masses is the name of the game, and Instagram has a stiff leg up on the competition. In the past nine months alone, Instagram has doubled its monthly active users to 300 million. That’s right – Instagram has gained nearly 150 million active users since Samsung launched current flagship Galaxy S5 in the U.S. “Really?”…yeah, really.

Will Instagram Go Public?

C’mon, everybody who’s ANYBODY is doing it. Facebook in 2012, Twitter in 2013, even Snapchat and Pinterest are joining the party with expected IPO’s in the coming year. It certainly makes sense – as going public has hardly put holes in the pockets of social’s biggest players to date. It’s only a matter of time until that conversation surfaces. The question is: what cash-flowing, business-driving, investor-enticing feature do these platforms have (yes, even Snapchat) that Instagram is still lacking? Advertising. Should Instagram decide to test the public waters in 2015, we can most definitely expect to see a more robust (and accepting) advertising platform. Speaking of which…

Instagram Ads

Okay, fine, Instagram has “advertising” – that is, if you’re a top-1% advertiser who’s willing to spend egregious amounts of time and resources working with Instagram to meet the toughest ad regulations in the industry. But for the rest of our brands, Instagram Ads are about as useful as the local Classifieds.

Instagram Ads don’t appear to be getting any more accessible any time soon, either. According to Instagram’s Director/Market Operations, Jim Squires, the platform is being “very methodical and deliberate” about the process. It’s a benchmarking phase. Their sloth-friendly pace is most likely a reactive approach due to parent company Facebook’s regular user meltdowns that come with platform alterations. Bottom line: don’t expect your average client’s brand to be advertising on Instagram anytime soon.

In the meantime, Instagram has yet to give us any diminishing algorithms to contend with, so paid advertising isn’t a necessary evil to maintain our reach and visibility (italics means it’s emphasized, people). As long as creativity is emphasized, a proper advertisement is as simple as the tap of a thumb.

Instagram Analytics (or, lack thereof)

We’ve been begging Instagram for an analytics platform for a while now. Sure, we have access to services like Iconosquare or TOTEMS, and even the big boys like Hootsuite pretend to have what we need from a reporting perspective. But metrics like “engagement rate” lack the context of what we need to prove that our content is really resonating with the end user.

Instagram has been buzzing about a new “time spent” metric for a while now. In fact, in a recent interview with Recode, it was announced that the average mobile user spends 21 minutes per day in the application. If Instagram is really as art-sy as they claim to be, they should know of this metric’s importance to us. Think of a fine art museum. How can you tell what pieces are TRULY appealing to an audience? They stop and stare at it for a while. Soon, a crowd gathers, and before you know it you’ve got what social media is all about: attention. When will Instagram actually grant us access to a “time spent” metric? Who knows. For now, “engagement rate” and a properly tagged link in your bio are going to have to do.

Here’s the thing, though – for everything Instagram is lacking, they make up for ten-fold. They still have the highest user “engagement” (if you’re into that sort of thing), they still have more active monthly users than Twitter, and they still maintain among the highest growth rates of any platform out there. Seriously, Instagram could give us all or none of the things in this report, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. We’re all still suckers for swag.