Category: Marketing Tips

Emoji’s are a nifty way of communicating with friends and family while using funny facial expressions. Ever since 2010, they’ve been used more and more since most people have access to a variety of them from phones and computers. Although, just because emojis are funny and popular doesn’t mean they are always used in the right way or overused. We want to give you a few tips on using emojis and what you should also avoid when using them.

Before trying to use them, you should decide for yourself if the platform you’re on and the audience you appeal to would like them or not. Using emojis can improve open rates of emails, improve engagement with users, and can help interactions on content. However, if your audience would find them off-putting or childish, it’s best to refrain. At the end of the day, it may take some time to decide if emojis are making an impact, but you’ll need to test them out in different scenarios to determine that for yourself.

Now we should cover the do and don’ts of using emojis:

Dos	Don’ts
– Connect the emoji with the topic of your content or business. – Use the right ones to engage with your audience. – Use to tell a story. – Create a game for users.	– Overuse them in every online marketing piece. – Avoid using ones that don’t make sense for your business.

A few websites we like to use for getting emojis:
emojipedia.org/ (our #1 choice)
getemoji.com/

Emojis are a great addition to how we communicate over the internet nowadays. However, if you’re new to them, you should be paying close attention. Your message may seem clear to you, but that doesn’t do anything if the recipient is confused on what you were trying to say. We’ve used emojis on guides and videos before. So, if you want us to take a look at something you want to send out or you have more questions about emojis, we’re a phone call away!

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Facebook is one of the, if not the most, largest social media platforms available throughout the world. With this platform comes the ability to promote and create events for others to attend. This is a great way to attract attention and get some information out about your event. We want to share with you how you can create a Facebook event.

Creating a Facebook event is fairly easy. There are two different types available, private and public. The main difference with a private event is that as a host, you need to invite guests and they can accept or decline the invitation. Outside of the invitations you sent out, other users can’t respond or interact with the private event. On the other hand, public events are available for anyone to view and learn about. With both types of events, you’re able to invite other users, edit the event details such as time and date, and promote each one to your own desire.  You can find the events option in the left menu on Facebook and once you click “create event” it’s straightforward from there.

Now that you know how to create an event, what would you use this feature for? Well, there are plenty of events you can promote with Facebook. Personally, I’ve seen car meets, festivals, graduation parties, and plenty more! One of the biggest concerns when creating a Facebook event is monitoring the responses. When a user finds an event, they have two options to respond. This can either be that they’re interested, or they’re going. Although, even if a user responds, we know life can be unpredictable and something may come up or they don’t feel like going.

Don’t worry about users who can’t make it though, if you want a strong gathering, you’ll need to promote your event! Promoting is just as important as setting up the event itself. Besides from posting, there are more ways to spread awareness about your event. This includes creating a hashtag for your event, asking others to help share your event, sharing content related to your event, and boosting your event. The earlier you get started only improves your chance of having a bigger attendance at the event.

Remember, the responses don’t determine how many people are in attendance, you do! Invite guests and keep promoting it. If you need some help trying to promote your event, contact us! We’re glad to work with you and try to improve advertising for your event.

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In our last blog, Engaging with Your Audience, we covered why and how you should engage with your audience. In this blog we want to discuss why you should encourage people to engage with your content.

Do you often wonder why you have so few interactions with your posts? While many people can view your post, only a few may actually consider commenting. That’s why you need to take extra steps to encourage people to engage with your business!

The more interaction your post receives, the more engagement and reach it will have. This means you should encourage your audience to react, comment, or share your posts daily! Try not to spam their feed with the same message. An example might be, you are viewing a lot of videos on YouTube, you may have seen a video where the creator asks people to like, comment, and share the video. In a sense, this is the same thing you want to do.

A creative way to ask for reactions and shares might be to ask them questions in posts where they may want to express their opinion. It could be simple and minimal questions such as, what’s your favorite movie right now, how are you doing, and what do you like doing on the weekends. These questions may seem unimportant, but it is a simple way to engage with your audience to have them share their answer and drive more engagement.

At times, you might want to include more important questions. These questions should focus on receiving feedback about your content and what your audience wants to see next! Ask them what they thought about your blog or what they want to see next. This could even give you more ideas of what you want to work on for the future. See what works best and hopefully you’ll get some slight increases in engagements on your posts.

It isn’t only a direct question that can drive engagement on your post. Quality content that has messages or information for your audience can be enough to generate comments or questions. Not every post will be a smash hit. Always make an effort to provide a message for your audience to trigger engagement.

If you’re having trouble getting your audience to engage with your content or you need help figuring out what to post, let us know! We know writer’s block can be a major obstacle. We can help.

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As a business, you should be giving your all to interact and engage with your audience as it grows. That’s one of the biggest accomplishments when marketing your business, growing your name, and when you’re just starting out it may be hard to engage with a small audience. That’s why we want to focus on how to find your target audience and what you should do when engaging with them!

Importance to respond to your audience?

It doesn’t only create a better outlook of your business for the individual you’re engaging with, but it also shows others what your response may be. You want to do your best to ensure you’re committed to focusing on what they have to say in a positive and professional way.

Before trying to engage with your audience, are you sure you’re on the right platform?

With the dozens of different social media platforms created, you want to stick to those which provide you with the correct audience. One question to ask yourself is, are you business-to-business or business-to-consumer? If you’re business-to-business you should create an account and business page on LinkedIn, if not you are free to find a social media platform which will work best for you!

Now that we’ve addressed those questions, we can discuss how to interact with your audience.

No matter what content you provide on your social media, whether it be pictures, videos, or a livestream, you should always reply to a question, reaction or comment. Not only is your reply going to be seen by the person who commented, but everyone who reads the reply. This means you should be focused, professional, and concerned with what your audience has to say. If it’s a major issue, you can even privately message them to discuss with them in a less visible setting. Minimal as it may seem, one bad reply could develop into a major issue if not addressed.

Remember, you want to also encourage your audience to engage with your posts and you should use hashtags. Interested in knowing more about hashtags? Learn more at Understanding Hashtags and Why They’re Important.

Need help to choose the right social media platform or to find your own audience? We have experience on multiple platforms and how to reach your audience.

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When you’re posting content, do you ever include a hashtag along with it? If you answered no, you may be missing out on extra attention to your post. If you don’t understand what a hashtag even does, we have you covered. We’re going to discuss what hashtags are and what they can do for your content on social media.

Depending on the platform, they may help you in the long run! Social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram group posts that include specific hashtags into a group. These groups and sometimes called folders can be viewed if someone searches for that specific hashtag, so your post may be found among plenty of others. Other platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat don’t utilize hashtags to their full extent. These platforms do not group together posts which means that if you don’t use hashtags it will not reduce performance.

Hashtags allow you to stay on top of what’s trending, providing a boost in traffic heading to your posts. Same as encouraging audience members to share posts, hashtags can increase your audience. Identify what may work out in your favor. Do not overuse hashtags for the sake of using them. This can have a negative affect as well.

When using hashtags, remember to use ones that are relevant to your business and/or the content of your post. Using a bunch of meaningless ones only looks unprofessional and makes your account look like a spam account. You should figure out what hashtags are being searched for and try to connect them to your business if they work. If they don’t work, don’t push them meaninglessly.

If there is a certain event going on that you want to create a voice for your business, research what hashtags are being used and trending and then include them. Voicing your business’ opinion on certain topics or events may be beneficial to your business!

If you need any form of social media assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are here to help market your business both through online and print marketing.

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One of the biggest platforms online is Facebook, which is used by billions of individuals all over the world. Not only is it for daily social media users and organizations, it also can be used by your own business to take advantage of their advertising options and reach the audience you want. Although other social media platforms may work better depending on the audience you want to reach, Facebook may be the platform you want to choose to round out your marketing.

Facebook provides two options when it comes to advertisements: Facebook Ads and Facebook Boosts. We’ll discuss each of the options and their pros and cons.

Facebook Ad

When creating a Facebook ad, there are several options to define and explore to reach the specific audience that you want.

• Placement – Decide where to place your ads. Locations can include the Facebook News Feeds, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram.
• Lookalike Audiences – Depending on the size of your audience, you can find a similar audience with demographics Facebook can provide to you by matching your current audience.
• Scheduling – Choose the time and days when you want to deliver your ad. You can test this to find out what time works best.
• Customer Conversion Tracking – Allows the ability to follow tracking of clicks that come to your website.

Facebook Boost

After posting to Facebook, if you notice a post is doing better than others, you can decide to “boost” it. Boosting will push your post to more users who may enjoy your content. Quick note, some posts don’t have the option, such as events, controversial items such as tobacco and guns, and political candidate endorsements, just to name a few. When you decide on a post to boost, before you finish confirming the boost, you can edit options such as what your budget will be and how long you want it to appear. You can even add more to your budget and extend a boosted post if you see it is doing very well and want more of a reach. Note, once a post is boosted you can not edit the content of the actual post.

Pros and Cons

So, is Facebook advertising right for your business?  Here are a few pros and cons.

PROS	CONS
Ad Tracking Audience Options Easy to Use Improves Audience Engagement Budget Settings	No Guaranteed Reach Users Ignoration Possibly High Costs Running out of advertising space

When looking at Facebook, it’s a very populated platform for you to get started on, but success may vary. You can’t always expect a successful return when advertising or boosting posts, so you have to work with it to find out what your audience likes while also trying to reach new people. Test it out and see how it works for your business, explore your options and mess around with the content you provide your audience.

If you want to get started, but think you may need extra help taking that first step, contact us and we can help. Even if you’re stuck or have certain problems you can’t find a solution, let us know and we can be of assistance!

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If you plan on live streaming, before you jump right into it, we wanted to fill you in on a few key tips and what you can do to prepare. Starting a live stream is as easy as ever, but you still want the quality to be as best as possible, and if you’re a new user you may stumble upon a few issues.

Before starting, you want to be prepared such as if it’s a business meeting. It may not be that serious, but being prepared only improves your chances for having a professional and high-quality live stream which audience members will want to view. Let’s dive into what you can do, first, get started.

Topics

Before you even begin, the first thing you need to decide on is the topic of your livestream, especially if you plan on doing these regularly!

Where to Stream

Once you have decided on the topic, the next thing is to decide where you want to stream. There are several platforms you can now livestream on. Depending on the topic may help you narrow down what platform you want to use to stream.

Equipment to use

You’ll want to make sure you have the proper equipment for live streaming. Your smartphone may be just fine, but you can also take it up a notch with higher quality items, which will help you produce a higher quality live stream.

If you want to improve sound and video quality you should consider a few factors. Conduct your stream in a quiet environment, with minimal interruptions or external issues to worry about, such as cars making noise outside or coworkers coming through the door. You should also ensure your internet connection is secure and strong. The worst part of livestreaming is if you start to freeze up or delay while it is going on!

Prepare for Streaming

You won’t be reading from a script, you should have notes jotted down on what you want to cover and have it where you can glance at during your livestream, should you need it. You also want to make sure you’re engaging with the audience. Have a topic that allows you to engage with your users and respond to a few of the questions or comments that you may encounter.

Promote it

Lastly, create hype around your live stream and promote it before it even occurs. No matter how big your audience is, if you don’t let people know, they may never realize you went live if you don’t tell them! Use posts to promote your live stream and even create an event notification that lets users know what date and time you’ll be live streaming. If you repeatedly tell your audience you’ll be going live, it only improves the possibility that more viewers will tune in once the time hits.

Not every live stream will go how you want it, there will always be a few problems to take care of, but it’s better to be as prepared as ever. If you need help figuring out how to live stream, let us know! We can help you prepare beforehand and figure out what material you want to cover to keep viewers tuned in.

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Media platforms are always introducing new ways for you to engage with your audience. Overtime, more platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have been introducing the ability to live stream to your audience, whether it be for fun or to cover a topic in mind. There’s been major success in live streaming on popular websites such as Twitch and YouTube over the years. We want to cover why people live stream and how it can benefit you.

Simple

Platforms have made it simple and easy for you to live stream to your audience. Even with your phone, you’re given the ability to start a broadcast. You should consider preparations before live streaming to have a more quality driven stream. The main purpose is to attract viewers and show the value of your product and service to them. If they stick around for only a few minutes, it’s worth it!

Creative

Not only is live streaming a creative way for you to do something new with your business, it also gives you the opportunity to engage with your audience. If you create a routine, this lets you communicate and discuss with users what they want to see and what you may be able to cover the next time you live stream. The biggest obstacle however, is trying to start or keep users tuned in. Not everyone may work out how you planned, but you can focus on certain information you want users to know or just check in on your audience.

Plenty of Reasons

There are plenty of other reasons for you to go live too! You can use live streams to introduce a new product or service you have coming up, promote special events, conduct a Q&A, demonstrate how to use your product, and more! The opportunity for live streaming is endless, you just have to focus on pulling in users with your exciting idea. Even if users don’t get to watch it while you’re live, they can still check it out later when they have more time. You can even encourage users to check out other content relating to what you’re performing, which can let them learn more and get your content more attention.

Drive engagement for your business

If you want to drive more engagement for your business, live streaming is a great new idea for you to put in the works. On Facebook, it’s shown that it increases engagement and interactions from users, so what are you waiting for? In another blog, we’ll cover what you should do to prepare for a live stream, but when you’re starting out you can test what works for you. It’s not rocket science when starting out, platforms provide plenty of further information on how to stream to your audience.

If you need help implementing live streaming into your business, you can ask us for help. We have experience, so we can help you improve your equipment set up or help figure out more ideas to stream about.

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When adding photos to your social media page, you want them to look as clear and professional as possible. This means your photos shouldn’t look blurry and they shouldn’t be cut off at the wrong spots. That’s why it’s important to understand the pixel dimensions of each social media platform.

We want to share a list of photo dimensions of the popular social media platforms you may use, but we must note that sizes may change depending on the platform. Should you notice a social media platform made changes, revisit our website for the updated information. When viewing the dimensions, they are set by width x height. If there is a byte storage capacity next to the dimensions, that means the image file size can’t be greater than that.

Google My Business

Profile Image: 250 x 250
Cover Image: 1080 x 608
Post Image: minimum size of 400 x 300

The maximum file size that can be used is 5 MB.

Facebook

Cover Image: 820 x 312 (minimum 400 x 150)
Profile Image: ≥180 x 180
Shared Post Image: 1200 x 630
Shared Link Preview Image: 1200 x 628
Event Image: 1920 x 1080

For desktop images, your profile image will appear 170 x 170. As a thumbnail for your Facebook posts, it will appear 32 x 32.

Twitter

Header Image: 1500 x 500 with a maximum file size of 5 MB.
Profile Image: 400 x 400 with a maximum file size of 2 MB.
In-Stream Image: 440 x 220

Even though your profile image will appear as 200 x 200 on most devices, try to upload a photo that is 400 x 400. It will provide a better quality image.

Instagram

Profile Image: 110 x 110
Image Thumbnail: 161 x 161
Shared Photos: 1080 x 1080
Shared Videos: 1080 pixels wide

Instagram Stories: 1080 x 1920 (minimum 600 x 1067) with a maximum file size of 4 GB.

Pinterest

Profile Image: 165 x 165 with a maximum file size of 10 MB.
Board Cover Image: 222 x 150 (minimum 55 x 55)
Pinned Image Preview: 236 pixels wide

LinkedIn

Banner Image: 1584 x 396 with a maximum file size of 4 MB.
Profile Image: 400 x 400 (minimum 200 x 200) with a maximum file size of 10 MB.
Company Cover Image: 1536 x 768
Shared Image: 350 pixels wide
Shared Link Preview: 180 x 110
Company Logo Image: 300 x 300 with a maximum file size of 4 MB.
Company Cover Image: 1536 x 768 (minimum 1192 x 220) with a maximum file size of 4 MB.
Company Page Banner Image: 646 x 220 with a maximum file size of 2 MB.
Square Logo (appears in company searches): 60 x 60 with a maximum file size of 2 MB.

YouTube

Channel Cover Images: 2560 x 1440 with a maximum file size of 4 MB.
Channel Icon: 800 x 800
Video Thumbnail: 1280 x 720

Images at 2560 x 1440 will be optimized for TV screens, while desktop computers will display them at 2560 x 423. Mobile devices will display YouTube cover art at 1546 x 423, while tablets will display them at 1855 x 423

We hope this quick and easy list is helpful when deciding what image to use next. Remember, dimensions may be changed at any time depending on the platform! If you need any help with your business and post marketing feel free to contact us!

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Interested in more Creatives Assistance? Get your copy of our Creative Assets Handbook! It is full of information for creating posts and images!

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Social media is a major part of marketing your business and creating a vision for your brand. Hundreds to thousands of people see your business online so you want to be able to keep up with your social portrait. One tool that is efficient and helpful to use across multiple social media channels is Hootsuite!

These are the benefits of using Hootsuite and the reason why we recommend using it!

Track Social Media Channels
It’s hard keeping up with all the different platforms your business may be found on. Hootsuite allows you to keep your eye on multiple platforms at the same time! This means you can check in on major platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, but at the same time look at other platforms you may be just beginning to use. This includes the ability to schedule posts for certain channels, engage with your audience you have on each platform, and hold all your social content in one place!

Connect with your Audience
Besides scheduling posts, you can even converse with and support customers that may initiate a connection with you or have a problem about a product or service. Instead of needing to open various windows and log into multiple accounts, you can use Hootsuite as your home hub to not only reply to individuals, but to also track your audience across each platform.

Involve your Team
If you think you need to manage Hootsuite alone, you’re mistaken! It may be tricky to learn at first. Once you learn it you can bring your team into the mix to help manage your social media and provide a single voice for your social media message. One key detail when inviting other members on your team is that you can not only work together with them, but you can set up a mini calendar of sorts for tasks you’ve given them, you can make sure they’re working on the right content by locking access to areas they don’t need to be, and you can communicate together to help improve workflow and connect ideas!

Hootsuite provides several payment plans for you to choose, along with a free trial for the first month if you want to explore the “professional” or “team” option! Before you make any final decision, make use of the free trial and compare the different plans they provide to figure out which one fits your needs! Let us know how it goes and if you have more questions about Hootsuite or how to manage your social media profiles contact us to discuss your marketing strategies!

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Ever since the internet came about, there have been dozens of ways for you, as a business owner, to market and promote your service to hundreds of thousands of individuals, and, it’s just as easy for customers, clients, and scammers to leave nasty reviews online about your business. Some businesses may think online reviews aren’t a huge deal, but they matter more than you may think. In this article, we will focus on why online reviews are important for customers to leave feedback and how they’re also important for you as an owner to grow your business.

Online reviews have become an asset for new potential customers to learn from your current and past customers about your business, product, or service before they make an initial purchase. You wouldn’t want to spend money on a product or service and come to find out that it wasn’t worth the money? Neither do your customers. Across the internet there are hundreds of review sites available for people to post on. Some of the big names include Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Whether the review they leave is positive or negative, that review is available to other users to see, and can drastically affect whether or not they decide to purchase or work with you. How many times have you found yourself checking the reviews before buying something?

Online reviews are also a unique tool for businesses to help grow their business, make improvements, and find out what works. You should push yourself to explore these review sites and learn how to use them so you can reply to customers and help relieve any negative reviews! If there is an issue, you can reach out to the customer to gain further insight into the problem and try to make any fixes necessary. Not every problem has a solution, but it’s always worth it to try and make amends with an unhappy customer. You should also keep in mind that some users may post negative reviews without reasoning to discourage businesses and lower the overall rating. These are defined as “internet trolling”. In our blog entitled “How To Respond to Negative Reviews Online”, we recommend ways to respond to negative reviews and how to reach the best solution.

As important as it is to learn about online reviews, you should also encourage your customers to leave one! When you receive positive reviews, they provide a better outlook of your business to other potential customers. Should you receive any negative reviews, that provides you the opportunity to make amends and pinpoint any possible issues that may need improvements.

When it comes to online reviews, by all means, don’t ignore them. Overtime, even a few negative reviews can have drastic results on the outlook of your business. We know you want to look your best for potential customers who may be willing to spend money with your establishment. We hope we gave you further insight into the importance of online reviews and we encourage you to try and use online reviews to your advantage to help improve your business experience.

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