Tag Archives: facebook
Three New Year Resolutions for your Online Marketing Strategy
The start of 2013 is a great time for starting afresh with your business online marketing plan and the best way to do this is by setting some clear manageable targets and goals. These are our top three new year resolutions for your businesses online marketing.
1. Facebook WILL be part of my customer engagement strategy
As a growing business you simply can no longer afford to ignore facebook, it is growing and evolving at an amazing rate, your audience is active on this site and it is growing fast through mobile and the younger demographics which make great posts with some creative imagery a really good place to start.
2. My business will send at least one targeted email per month
As a business you need to keep in touch with your customers and prospects on a regular basis, you can guarantee if you dont then your competitors will. Setting yourself up to email on a monthly basis is the right kind of timeline to not deluge them but keep in touch – which is exactly what you want.
We run our own email marketing system called mailPDQ a very cost effective tool for collecting data from a multitude of sources and then segmenting this so it can then be used to target a message relevant to the audience, please contact us through the website for a free no obligation trial
3. Blogging will be part of your business engagement strategy
Blogging is a great way to put a personality on your business, not only does it positively help with your search engine rankings but it also allows you to position individuals within the business as leaders or at the very minimum contributors. By incorporating images and video you can really make this updatebale area of your site almost have a life of its own, i.e. if your factory has a new forklift why not video all that it can do and why its a great addition. Basically think outside the box, the rules have changed…
So if your business can at least start down this route with these three simple steps you will begin to see a clear and accountable result for your actions and if you want help embedding this into a full Digital Marketing Strategy then we are the team to help, please get in touch here.
Five top tips for engaging your facebook fans
Following the recent facebook marketing seminar at Exeter Rugby Club we thought that it would be good to share our five top tips for engaging your facebook fans.
Firstly with over 1 billion users and growing your business has a massive marketing opportunity on Facebook, one that numerous companies are taking full advantage of. Being on facebook is not enough though, you need to be using it effectively and making time to curate your community. So the question is how? well here are our five top tips for engaging your facebook fans;
1. Be YOU
Social Media is incredibly transparent so dont try to be something you aren’t as you will be found out. By all means be professional, be funny let your personality and the personality of the business come through in updates you make and if posting updates is someone in your offices job then tell your audience that – dont hide, Becky from XYZ Parts sounds loads better then XYZ Parts dont you think?
2. Try to include images where possible
An images tells a thousand words so the quote goes, so wherever possible include an image in any updates and make sure its relevant to the update, from our research image based updates do gain a better response rate and surely this is what any business is after.
3. Keep getting LIKES
Once you have built your acceptable level of LIKEs to your facebook page, dont stop, keep going (while you’re at it hop over to Facebook.com/gleavemedia and LIKE our page) import email lists and ask for LIKES, include your facebook link in any email outs and your email signature, give people a reason to LIKE you as people who know your business are far more likely to engage with you.
4. Post compelling content
This surely is a no brannier, post content that is genuinely interesting and your users will want to engage with, be fun even linking to topical and funny videos – remember Peter Kay talking about Biscuits, how is your office coffee?
5. DONT SELL
Their is nothing worse than visiting a facebook page that just wants to sell sell sell, this is an instant turn off if it helps do you remember the safe style TV advert? DONT DO THIS!
Your facebook page needs to be about engagement nobody likes to be sold at constantly, is this all you do?
So here you have it our five top tips for engaging on Facebook, what do you recommend works for your business? Please use the comments to share..
Facebook training for Charities in Plymouth
At the end of September we had another of our Social Media Seminars aimed just for Charities, this one in Plymouth entitled ‘Facebook from flop to fantastic’. We had around 30 charities from across the South West who learnt how to make better use of Facebook for their charity. Using case-studies, campaigns and a warts ‘n’ all expose of this popular SocMed tool, we were able to guide them through the steps of using Facebook to engage and promote their charity.
As with all our training seminars, interaction and participation are always encouraged and we welcomed charities large and small who wanted to learn how to make better use of these new media technologies in a fun and challenging way.
We also very pleased to have Santander talking about the Santander Foundation which funds local, regional and national charities for their work within the UK. They are committed to helping disadvantaged people through their two charitable priorities. Formerly the Abbey Charitable Trust, the Foundation was set up in 1990 and has given more than £36 million to charities in the UK. In 2012 the Foundation will be increasing its grants budget to £4.5 million.
With some great feedback and really positive results already for the charities, a very pleasing result all round!
So if you business or charity needs help making the most out of your Facebook and social media presence then why not get in touch, we’d be happy to have a no obligation chat, what have you got to lose?- get in touch here.
visit GleaveMedia on Facebook here – http://www.facebook.com/gleavemedia – don’t forget to click LIKE
A few testimonials from some of our recent seminars;
‘relaxed, but informative and easy to understand. Alistair was engaging and enthusiastic, providing practical examples and more than happy to answer questions‘ – Alistair Sustrans
‘Really useful, good to think about integration‘ – Chris Penberthy
Getting your ecommerce site ready for Christmas
As we head into the busiest quarter for most ecommerce sites, you as a site owner you need to ask yourself some really pertinent questions as there is simply no point in sending traffic to a less-than-optimised website or product listing. So before you do anything else then take a good look at your website and product listings and ask yourself the following question: Would I buy from this site?
You need to be hard and honest and this is where an experienced outside team can help, asking such things like;
is your design professional enough for your business image?
do your product pages look dated?
does the copy need updating, are you actually selling each and every product?
What about your photos, if they were taken on a mobile phone – this is not good enough these days.
Does your site have any additional costs that you aren’t honest and open about?
Do you have a significant drop off at checkout?
If the answer is yes to any of these direct questions your site will be loosing business, maybe more than you are actually winning so why not take the opportunity now to get your site working as it should. Don’t forget these days this can include simply collecting data on a brochure download or getting new likes on your Facebook page.
The simple truth is that you need to make it easy for any potential (and returning) customer to do business with you, if you don’t they may go elsewhere.
Gleave Media are experienced ecommerce consultants and can help get your business plans sorted in time for Christmas and beyond, please get in touch here…
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Facebook marketing
So is your business on the world biggest Social Network? With over 845 million monthly active users can you afford not to be is the real question you should be asking….
We have worked with many businesses to enhance their presence on facebook, that maybe through twitter and facebook training of the marketing team to actually running the business on facebook, whatever the need I am sure we can help…
Some Facebook stats direct from Facebook themselves..
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So if you want your business to make the most of this amazing social tool, why not get in touch and see how the professional and flexible team at Gleave Media can make a real difference to your business get in touch here.
Why not check us out on Facebook here facebook.com/gleavemedia don’t forget to click LIKE at the top of the page.
Social Media Training to local authority travel group
Gleave Media provides a number of Social Media seminars and training in Exeter and the South West. One of our recent seminars was for a local authority group who wanted a more in depth look at how social media would benefit engagement with their diverse user base.
In the Social Media Seminar we covered all the major social media applications and discussed how they can be used to engage all sections of the community, so we covered things like Tweeting and Facebook also making best use of YouTube and how these can be a key part of an inbound marketing strategy – key to developing a strong presence online.
“Alistair was generous with his time and gave our South West group of Local Authority Travelwise Officers some useful insight into the world of social media and online marketing. We all went away inspired to put his ideas into practice”
Recommendation from a Travel Plan Officer attending the seminar
For further information about our Social Media Training please use our contact form and/or add your details to our email list, using the form below.
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10 ways to get more facebook likes
With literally millions of Facebook pages gaining new fans every day, even though the button changed from become a fan to LIKE so it can be more socially shared on external sites – you are still are effectively a FAN.
The question therefore for all business is how to get more LIKE’s, as more LIKE’s mean more people spreading your message on their walls. Here are my top 10 with some examples.
- Update
Yes the simplest usually is the best, if you create a page then please update it, you can’t just expect people to LIKE you if you dont update it. Its simple and easy to do and make sure you create a mixture of content, links out to other sites as well as yours, images and status updates. - Suggest to friends
When you are logged in as admin you can by a tab on the right hand side suggest to friends, if they are good friends why wouldnt they LIKE your page. - Ask
The image above came from the Thistle Hotel in Exeter, and guess what they are using traditional media to simple ask, please like us on Facebook and here is the URL to use, they also offer an incentive (see below). - Offer incentive – with reveal tab
You can offer a reason for someone to LIKE your facebook page, Thistle use an incentive of first to hear about special offers, discounts etc. You could take this one stage further if you are an ecommerce site and use reveal, whereby a user has to LIKE you to see the next tab that is maybe a discount on their first order. - Connect to Twitter
Unforgivable this not to connect the two, whatever you do ensure you keep them on separate tabs (facebook.com/gleavemedia) and you can use a free app from the likes of Involver to do this. - Enewsletter promotion
If you have a facebook page then mention it, in all your print media and your enewsletter, what could be simpler than sending out a newsletter with the words click here to LIKE us on facebook and a link through? If you need an email marketing system we run a very thorough one. - Memorable URL
When you get over 25 likes you can head over to http://www.facebook.com/username/ where you can then choose your own memorable URL – we use facebook.com/gleavemedia.
- Page Badges
A simple tool you can get from facebook is the badge (http://www.facebook.com/badges/) here you can tailor the code and grab it to appear on your site, links the page and site together. - Like box on your site
Facebook has some great tools to enable your website and facebook page to coexist, head to http://www.westernrunner.co.uk and you can see on the right hand side a big box with faces of all those who LIKE the site – while you are there you can also click LIKE. - More facebook friends
Simple this one, we saved this till last, get more friends on your account, then you have more people to run through the above 9 steps with – simple really!
There are of course lots more great ways to get more LIKES on your facebook page, while you’ve read this why not click LIKE on the side of this post to keep updated.
GrowMyCharity launches in North Devon
Friday 13th May the launch of GrowMyCharity.com a collaboration between GleaveMedia and Jackie Dawkins. Why you may ask, well we have both been working with charity clients for a number of years and wanted to find a way to support charities of all shapes and sizes to grow and flourish by providing them with resources, ideas and tools.
Our opening event saw a number of charities come along for an opening presentation and group discussion on online marketing for their charities, something close to our hearts, and where we believe we can offer real value and support to charities.
The site and events will grow significantly over the coming months with more resources, information and guests posts etc, please come and join us on our newFacebook page here.
We’d love to see you at the next event at the wonderful Seale Hayne on June 22nd and you can book a FREE place for your charity here http://growmycharitysh.eventbrite.com/
