Tag: marketing

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TikTok, Listening and Successful Content Creators

Have you heard about Tik Tok? In our previous post we wrote about popups. In this post we will look at a new social media channel that is getting results for some big players.
tik tok

Image by Jan Alexander from Pixabay

Tik Tok Video

TikTok is a platform for short videos. It is popular with millennials and younger adults. It is an excellent platform for generating engagement and video feedback from your audience.

Here is a link to an article on Hubspot Marketing Blog with examples of 7 brands using Tik Tok successfully. While you are there, check out the free templates Hub spot are offering on their site.

Tik Tok is only one year old and already has 500 million users. If you are targeting this audience, your brand lends itself to informal and fun videos then you might want to consider this new platform. The Washington Post, the NBA and others are amongst the early advertisers already on this new platform.

Do you listen?

This week, Mark Schaefer published an excellent article about his “Brand Engagement Fantasy“.  He quoted Cindy Gallop, with 80 000 followers on twitter finding that a tweet mentioning a number of big brands received no response from any of those brands. Not a single engagement. What a missed opportunity.

On my personal twitter account @zimpeterw, I have around 16 000 followers. I have never bought followers and do not have an active campaign to get new followers. Mostly I just follow some who follow me or are recommended by people I already follow and trust. Those followers have come along steadily over almost 11 years since I became an early twitter user.  That is not meant to impress you. I only mention it because with that many followers I know how hard it is to listen effectively.

The point of Mark’s article is that very few marketers are listening to the conversations about their brands on Twitter or any social media platform. It takes time and effort to do it effectively and it takes dedicated people to do it.

That’s why the advice to marketers from the early days of social media to master one social media platform at a time is still good advice.  As good as new channels like Tik Tok might seem for your brand make sure you have the resources before jumping aboard.

Read Mark’s article for the full story.

Successful Content Creators

Most small business owners and entrepreneurs struggle to regularly and consistently create good content for blogs, websites and social media. I believe blog posts can be the foundation of good content creation because you can link to them on social media platforms. That exposes your content to a wider audience. But you have to come up with ideas for the blog post first.

There are hundreds of articles by a huge number of experts and not-so-experts on content creation. I thought this one by Maggie Butler of Hubspot Marketing is solid advice and one of the better ones I have come across. It’s worth reading.

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5 Tips You Should Know Before Blogging

1-Make it personal

People want to read stories, not long essays or white papers.  Blogging is a way to build a connection with your audience especially when using simple words like ‘you’ and ‘I’.  Introduce a personal story to help engage your readers or something that is relatable to them.

2-Ask questions

If your blog asks questions of the readers, chances are someone will respond by commenting.  This is what you want – engagement.  By the way, don’t be afraid of constructive criticism from your audience.  Everyone has a viewpoint and an opinion.   Respond to all comments with respect and a professional tone.  Your readers will feel more connected to you and your message.

3-You need a community

If you upload a blog to your website and expect the world to go read it, think again.  Here’s where you need to put some time and energy.  By building a solid social media following, you’ll create a better opportunity for your blog to be shared.  Essentially, this is your main distribution channel.  Build your Facebook and Twitter followers.  Create videos and upload them to YouTube.  Reach out to other blogging sites to see if you may become a guest blogger and offer to reciprocate.  Turn your blog posts into podcasts that can be listened to while on the road.  There are several available methods for reaching your audience.  Try to use as many as you can.  There is another platform called Klusster which is a fabulous tool for bloggers to create their own publications or joining forces with other bloggers to create a community publication.  Check out this one on health which is made up of a community of local businesses sharing content related to health.

blogging
Healthy Waterloo Region

4-Stand out

There are over a billion blogs on the web vying for your attention, so you need to make yourself stand out.  Make it visually interesting.  I don’t know about you, but if I see a blog post that is almost all text and no images, I am not as inclined to read it through.  Break up your text with infographics and other visuals.  It will make your blog more enticing to read.

5-Choose a specific niche

It’s impossible to be all things to everyone and do it effectively.  So, don’t do it.  Pick a niche that isn’t too small either or you’ll have a hard time growing your traffic or have fewer people interested in reading your content.  Use Google Trends to home in on a niche.   This will show you on a graph the interest trends on a particular topic.  Here’s an example of a site blogging on the current popular niche of tiny home living.  The topic isn’t so small that the writers would run out of content anytime soon but it’s still specific enough to target interested readers.

Conclusion

If you don’t take the above key elements into consideration when blogging, you may find yourself floundering. These are just as important as planning your content.  Once you’re ready to begin writing, here is an article that might help you get things started and organized. What else have I missed here? What did you find to be critical to your blogging success?  Let me know by commenting.

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Marketing Trends for 2017: Print vs. Digital Advertising

While online marketing is set to exceed television as the number 1 advertising medium for 2017, that doesn’t mean that print has become completely obsolete. In fact, I was actually curious about this and set out to do a little investigating. Every Wednesday I receive a neatly bundled mass of flyers, circulars and coupons tightly bound with an elastic. It made me wonder how many other households receive the same stack which eventually finds its way into the recycle box? How many people actually go through them? The answers may surprise you.

The Decline of Print Advertising

Would you believe that in North America alone, over $15 billion is spent on flyer advertising? Clearly businesses still see the value in the printed ad, but why? One of the reasons is that print is viewed as a more credible form of advertising. With increased use of the internet and social media, identifying truth from fake news may require more critical thinking. While printed ads may appear as more trustworthy, this type of marketing continues to decline in favour of the digital media. Predictions indicate that it will continue to decline well into 2019.

Despite the rise of internet marketing options, most marketing experts would agree that print isn’t going away anytime soon. Surveys show that when it comes to looking for a bargain, paper-based flyers and circulars continue to be sifted through even over digital flyers. This is especially true with an older demographic that still appreciates the tangibility of paper.

Retailers have moved to a combination of print and digital flyers. Although they recognize that the digital world continues to be on the upward trend, they still dedicate a smaller budget to print. There are many advantages to using the internet and social media feeds for marketing but the main reason is cost. It’s far less expensive and sometimes even free.

Print advertising may not be as popular with some businesses these days, but it is still a very useful method of promotion. The best option is to use a combination of both online and print marketing, to reach as many people as possible in as many ways as possible.

As for that pile of flyers I get every week? Well, to be honest, I rarely go through them. In fact, it often goes from the front door straight into the recycle bin. I simply don’t have the time or inclination to go through them. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please don’t hesitate to connect with me.

If you want to read more information on this topic, you may be interested in the following articles:

Print Advertising Trends For 2017

Why printed flyers still work