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Tell Them A Story

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Yes, we celebrate Martin Luther King Day every year. And still, our society puts up with unfairness and inequality every day. Lawmakers, lawyers, and judges can really do very little to change it. We tolerate misogyny, racism, and prejudice against all kinds of people. Nevertheless, we find ways to be deeply offended by the pettiest slights and the smallest injustices.

When a teacher gives a student a better grade than the student deserves, we can be outraged. If someone on television uses a racial slur, the internet lights up with anger. More than a billion people on this globe live on 23 cents a day or less. Every 16 seconds, somebody in the world dies of hunger – usually a child. But what really gets people mad is what Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber did on the news last night.

When Sheriff Bull Connor directed fire hoses and vicious dogs on innocent civil rights marchers in Birmingham back in 1963, viewers didn’t see centuries of racism, slavery, and violence. Instead, they saw one small story, one unfair and violent act. It summarized and represented the history of racism in a nutshell – in a brief moment. Two years later, the Civil Rights Act was the law of the land.

People are drawn to small stories and narratives, to something we can grasp, understand, and identify with. When you need multiple charts and graphs and studies from Harvard to get your point across, it’s going to be ignored or at best quickly forgotten.

In social media marketing, you gain one like, one follower, and one new customer at a time. Tell them stories they can relate to. Help them to focus on your message. There’s a reason so many ad campaigns use a theme like “tell us your story.” And there’s a reason so many TV commercials tell stories. Story-telling is one of the oldest – thus one of the surest – ways to communicate. Keep it simple. Keep it focused. Tell them a story.

Marketing With Instagram

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Instagram, with an estimated 150 million monthly active users, has emerged as one of the most rapidly-growing mobile applications ever, and its growth continues to accelerate. With millions of consumers already active on the platform, the benefits of Instagram are easy enough for marketing pros to imagine. But you’ll have to be proactive to maximize your visibility on Instagram; yours is not the only company using it as a marketing tool.

Instagram is not just about selling. In fact, using your Instagram account only to sell, sell, sell is a predictable way to lose the interest of your Instagram audience. You’ll need to kick off engaging dialogues, listen and respond to your followers, and post thought-provoking, inventive images that fire your followers’ imaginations. Here are some tips for mastering Instagram:

  • Make sure the Bio section at the top of your profile page is complete. Tell visitors who you are, what you do, and where to find you. Add a little something extra to encourage visitors to learn more about you.
  • Link your social media together. If you post a blog that already has some followers, embed your photos and videos from Instagram. Capitalize on Facebook’s integration of Instagram to reach both audiences. Making your Instagram account visible on your Facebook page inevitably increases dialogue and sharing.
  • Post quality, interesting visuals. Your photographs don’t have to be professional, but they do need to grab the eye and express some aspect of your company’s mission or vision. Give readers something they’ll find personally fascinating or intriguing; you want followers who “bond” with you. Most photos should in some way reflect the lifestyle of your customers. Don’t be afraid to use video, too.
  • Follow your followers. Reciprocation not only expresses gratitude for their support, but it opens new opportunities to be noticed by other Instagram users.
  • Consider hiring a social media marketing firm to create and coordinate your Instagram account and all of your internet-based marketing efforts. You’ll save hours every month, and you’ll know that your work is in the hands of marketing professionals on the Internet’s cutting edge.

Those Abandoned Shopping Carts

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A recent study found something that may be disturbing to many online marketers. The study found that when consumers shop online, 75 percent of the shopping carts they initiate are abandoned before the sale is finalized. If you’ve brought a consumer to the place where he or she is about to make a purchase, you don’t want anything to get in the way. Let’s look at the reasons why users abandon their shopping carts and see if we can remove any obstacles that stand between customers and finalized sales.

1. Buyer’s remorse: It’s that feeling you get after making a big purchase when you first ask yourself, “Do I really need this?” Online, however, buyers have plenty of opportunities to get that feeling before finalizing the sale. It’s human nature; it’s the same reason you see out-of-place abandoned items near the checkout lines in retail stores, and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

2. Just window-shopping: Kids like to pretend they’re superheroes, and we really like putting those designer dresses and jackets in our shopping carts. But your kid isn’t really a superhero, and a lot of people just like to pretend they’re wearing those designer clothes. According to Women’s Health magazine, window-shopping can be a harmless fantasy that “releases mood-lifting endorphins, boosts your immune system, keeps your brain nimble, and even fulfills basic social needs.” Online window-shopping floods the senses and stimulates the imagination, and no credit card is needed for that.

3. Tax and shipping: Sure, that “Breaking Bad” t-shirt looked great online when it was listed for $14.99. Then some tax was added, the shipping charge was calculated, and your effort to identify with a TV character was just a whim that you quickly forget. Increasingly, online retailers are working to soften the sticker shock by calculating tax and shipping charges before you begin checking out. Since those charges can’t be eliminated, this is probably the best approach

4. The Great Coupon Code Hunt: You’re about to check out, and you notice it: Enter Coupon Code Here. Thus, the Great Hunt begins. You open tabs. You conduct searches. “Error 404 File Not Found” is burned into your brain. You can become so obsessed with finding the coupon code that you actually forget about your purchase, or you become so frustrated that you decide to quit the whole thing. Here’s a situation online retailers can actually do something about. Studies show that you are far more likely to make a sale when your coupon codes are easy to find. Coupon codes are a special incentive to buy, and customers genuinely appreciate them.

PoachIt is using a new approach; if customers don’t like a price, they can sign up for alerts when the item is reduced or goes on sale. Innovative thinking like this is the way social media marketers can avoid some of the built-in obstacles to online retail buying and selling.

Avoiding Click Farms

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Celebrities, businesses and even the federal government have purchased phony Facebook likes, Twitter followers, or YouTube viewers from “click farms,” offshore boiler-room operations where workers like, like, and like with thumbs up buttons, video views, and retweets that inflate social media numbers. Who buys bogus likes? Ironically, it’s the marketers whose value is based on their credibility – attorneys, for example.

Don’t do it. Social media marketing requires a genuine and authentic engagement, something that’s admittedly difficult for always-busy attorneys with other priorities. An established social media marketing company is a much better alternative to the click farm. A good social media marketing firm can help you gain genuine likes, views, and retweets, the old-fashioned way: by earning them. Instead of a one-shot deal with an ethics-deficient click farm, hiring a social media marketing firm means you’ll have direct, professional, hands-on marketing help that can genuinely boost your firm’s reputation and online presence.

Security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carla De Micheli estimated in 2013 that sales of fake Twitter followers have the potential to bring in $360 million annually, and that fake Facebook activities bring in $200 million a year. It’s big business, and you don’t want to be part of it. A spokesman for WeSellLikes.com (which sells 1000 Facebook likes for $49.99) told the Associated Press, “Businesses buy the Facebook likes because they’re afraid that when people go to their Facebook page and they only see 12 or 15 likes, they’re going to lose potential customers.”

The biggest internet companies are trying to crack down on the click farms. Speaking for Google, Andrea Faville told the AP that Google and YouTube are taking “action against bad actors that seek to game our systems.” The illusion of a mass following is just that: an illusion. The worst thing that can happen, of course, is getting caught. It may be no big deal if the local comic book store buys a few fake likes, but attorneys and other professionals simply cannot afford the damage to their credibility if they’re caught in unethical behavior.

Social Networks That No Business Should Work Without

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Social networks have changed the face of business forever. They allow businesses and professionals to interact with members of their client or customer base in a new, innovative way and allow businesses and professionals the chance to market products and services for absolutely nothing at all. Here is a list of some of the most popular social networks that are available to businesses and professionals along with their primary benefits:

Facebook

It may not have been the first social network, but it was definitely the first to get it right. Facebook lets businesses and professionals create their own pages which can then be “liked” by individual users of the social network. The more likes that a page is able to receive, the higher it will rank in the social network’s internal search engine, and the more likely that new clients or customers will be attracted to using the business or service for themselves. A good social media campaign should include a plan to get as many Facebook likes as possible.

Twitter

There is no distinction on Twitter between accounts for businesses and professionals and accounts for individual users. Anyone can create a Twitter account for themselves or a business. Once an account is created, any other Twitter user can opt to become a follower of that account to receive messages from the followed account. Unlike other social networks that are full of bells and whistles, Twitter is beautifully simple to use. The service lets users create public messages up to 140 characters in length which can be read by anyone, but which appear specifically in the news feeds of any official followers. It may not seem like a lot, but 140 characters is plenty of space for businesses and professionals to keep prospective and satisfied clients and customers engaged in business happenings and offers.

Google+

Google’s solution to Facebook, Google+ offers many of the same benefits as Facebook, plus a few extra perks. Perhaps the biggest and best perk of using Google+ is that information shared on Google’s social network is instantaneously indexed by Google’s search engine. This means that users of Google+ are more likely to have the information which they share on the social network viewable by users of the Google search engine than those who only share the information on Facebook or Twitter. While possible for Facebook and Twitter profiles to appear in Google search results, information shared on a Google+ profile is likely to reach a favorable search engine rank on Google faster than an equal profile created on Facebook or Twitter.

LinkedIn

Designed to be the social network for business professionals, LinkedIn can be a great way for businesses and professionals to find new customers and clients. The network is perhaps the most professional social network among the web’s most popular networks, so personal posts, comments, and photos should be excluded from the LinkedIn profile. The benefit to using LinkedIn is that the service connects people who are looking for work with people who are looking to have work done. It is a go-to resource for many businesses and professionals who are looking for fellow businesses or professionals that they can outsource to.

Why You Should Have Interest In Pinterest

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If you’ve ignored Pinterest, don’t. It’s an important social media network with 70 million users and 2.5 billion page views per month. Pinterest is still relatively new; development only began in 2009, and the founders were still operating Pinterest out of a small apartment as late as 2011.

If you’ve been too busy to find out about Pinterest or to take advantage of the site, you should know that its users buy more of the products they see on Pinterest than Facebook, and they’re also more likely to arrive at your own website from Pinterest than from Facebook. Here are some basic tips for getting started on Pinterest and taking advantage of this popular, growing social media network.

Be sure to include everything about your business that customers should know, and use your business name as the “profile name.” Be sure your profile is complete, and use a business page rather than a personal profile page; otherwise, you’ll forfeit the ability to use the analytics data. Plus, a complete profile looks more professional and is key to your SEO goals.

  • Include links to your Facebook and Twitter pages and to your own site and/or blog. Used properly, Pinterest can be a potent SEO tool.
  • Follow other businesses, especially those similar to yours. This lets you see what’s working for them, and it can sometimes give you ideas and insights.
  • Generally speaking, don’t mix your personal interest boards with business boards. If you sell comic books or hand-made jewelry, your customers probably aren’t interested in your wedding plans or favorite recipes. (This advice is good for other social media sites too, not just Pinterest.)
  • Pin the right images. When you upload pictures or graphics, make sure they’re clear and attractive to the eye. Maximum image size on Pinterest is 5000 pixels high x 554 pixels wide. And don’t overwhelm your audience by posting too many images at once.
  • Don’t turn on “Search Privacy.” If you do, your customers won’t be able to find you in search engine results. Make sure Search Privacy is off in your Account Settings.

Pinterest has plenty of other bells and whistles you can use to your advantage, so it’s worth your time to take a close look at what’s there. Pinterest is just too big and important to be ignored any longer, so if you’re confused by it, or if you’re just too busy, you may choose to get some help from a good social media marketing company.