Category: Digital Marketing

email marketing campaign

How to Write an Email Marketing Campaign

An email marketing strategy starts with an email sent by a company to a specific list of customers or clients. A good email marketing strategy will generate a number of customers, engage with your list, and help you generate more leads and sales. One of the biggest advantages of email marketing today is that most people still do use email extensively. It is easy to create a list, send emails, manage lists, and send out emails quickly. This article will provide you with a few tips on how to write effective email messages.

Determine Your Email’s Purpose

The first thing that you want to do when designing an email is to determine what the point of the email is. For example, if your email is to sell your product, your subject line should be compelling enough to convince your recipient that your message is valuable. Your email should also have some call-to-action elements. In other words, if you are writing an email to sell you new book, you will want to include a link leading to your book website, a short sales pitch, and a download link to your free eBook. If you are writing an email to inform customers of a special event or promotion, you will need to include a direct call to action.

Utilize Calls To Action

In addition to your title, body, and call to action in the body of the email, your email should also contain a call to action at the end. You will want to include a closing statement that closes the sale, and encourages the recipient to sign up for your mailing list. You will also want to include the name of your mailing list, as well as the address of your website. When you create these signatures, you want to ensure that the text is readable, and does not contain anything that could be deemed offensive by recipients.

Experiment With Email Frequency

Another important part of how to write an email is how often you should send emails to your list. Most email campaigns today send a single email to your list on a daily basis. This is a good strategy because you want to send the message out to people who might be interested in what you have to offer. However, you will want to send out a second email to people who might be interested in joining your mailing list every week, monthly, or quarterly basis. As mentioned above, you want to encourage people to join your mailing list through direct, but quick, contact.

Focus on Easy to Read Content

When it comes to email marketing campaigns, the content of your emails should be conversational and easy to read. In addition, your email should be written in a conversational tone that makes your recipients curious about what you are offering. For example, when sending an email to inform clients that your next conference is tomorrow, it is important to include a call to action and direct the recipients towards the link to your website. This will help your email is viewed more favorably by recipients.

Utilize Keywords Effectively

Another element of how to write an email that helps is using your keywords effectively. Most people use search terms in their email addresses. Therefore, when they are reading the email, they are more likely to open your email and see the links. However, your words should be related to the email topic in question.

Create an Informative Signature Template

A great way to write an email is to use a template with all of your signature lines and body. In other words, you do not want to have your name or company name on each header, only use your company name on the first three lines of your email signature line. This will make your email seem professional. Also, it will make it easier for recipients to skim over your message, as well as make sure that you have included the necessary information that they were looking for.

It is easy to become overwhelmed with email lists. The most effective way to make sure that you are sending the right message to your list and to ensure that your messages are open and read, is to hire a professional to write and deliver your emails. Once you find an agency that can meet your needs, you will begin to realize that it does not take long to build a large email list that is responsive to your marketing efforts.

Ready to Get Started with an Award-Winning Copywriting Agency?

If you want to know more about writing effective blog posts, website pages, press releases, and other digital marketing strategies, contact the Triassic Media Group today by emailing info@triassicmedia.com. We’re happy to help you with your content marketing needs.

4 Common Grammar Mistakes In Writing To Avoid

What are the most common grammatical errors in writing? This is a question that many people ask when they are writing an essay, report, letter, or even an article. A lot of people would think that they are the only ones making mistakes, but that is not true. All sorts of errors in writing exist.

Photo by Katelyn on Pexels.com

The biggest problem that most writers face is the fact that they do not pay enough attention to the grammar rules. This is a very important aspect of writing because when you write and have to proofread your work, there will be no point in editing your work if you do not take care of your grammar. If you want to be an effective writer then you need to learn and apply the correct grammar rules for your topic.

If you learn the rules of writing in English then you can easily avoid making spelling errors while writing a piece. Grammar rules are easy to learn and they are not difficult to apply. Even some writers tend to make grammatical mistakes even though they are quite aware of the rules. Most of the common grammar mistakes are usually due to the writer not paying attention to the rules at all.

The most common grammar mistake is using the subjunctive with the indicative. Subjunctive is a form of verb used in the past tense and in a variety of forms. This kind of verb is used to indicate something in the past, which is usually in the past tense. It has a specific form, because it is part of the form of verb. For example, I ate, you ate, they ate and you will eat.

Subjunctive is often used in the past tense to indicate that the action took place in a specific time. For instance, “The dog ate the ham,” is an example. The verb of the sentence means, “The dog ate the ham.” The use of this form is not incorrect, but it should not be used with infinitive verbs, which means “for”. The infinitive form of this verb is used to show that the action is happening right now. The use of this form should not be used in written texts because it can make it hard to read. This kind of error is easily corrected by using an article proofreading software or a proofreading service for a fee.

Some other common grammar mistakes in writing include:

  • Including the definite article when the topic should be indefinite
  • Omitting the article
  • Confusing sentence structure.

There are many other common mistakes that are made when it comes to grammar. If you want to avoid these mistakes then you need to pay proper attention to what you write. It is therefore very important that you make sure that you get yourself educated about the rules of grammar before you start writing anything. This will help you avoid mistakes in the future and thus make your work look professional and interesting. To avoid errors, you should always keep an eye on the language and make sure that your writing is not too technical in nature.

3 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2019

Digital marketing is one of the most important tools for small business owners and marketers. Its relatively low cost compared to traditional forms of advertising and media make it a good option for companies with limited marketing budgets, without impacting ROI. Since many customers fast forward through TV commercials and don’t have a newspaper subscription, some marketing experts argue that even companies with massive marketing budgets should direct large portions of their marketing budgets toward digital marketing. Here we’ve outlined three digital marketing trends to look out for in 2019.

1. Consumers distrust Facebook

Facebook remains to be a significant tool that companies can utilize to reach their customer base at very little cost. Sharing valuable content and engaging with customers can happen directly in their newsfeed. If you already manage your company’s Facebook page, you might have noticed changes in your daily follower count, especially over time.

Many users have begun to deactivate their Facebook accounts, which reduces your overall number of likes. As they reactivate their accounts, these users will once again show up in your page likes total. Do not let this trend dissuade you from using Facebook as part of your digital marketing efforts. Just make sure to diversify your digital marketing efforts to reach customers you otherwise might miss.

2. Mail Chimp changed its email policies

Historically, email marketing platforms, such as Mail Chimp, only allowed companies to email individuals that opted into their email subscription lists. Changes in 2019 to Mail Chimp’s policies now allow companies to email other types of users, including those who haven’t specifically opted into your company’s email subscription list. This includes former customers.

This means that companies should take advantage of this change to create other types of email marketing campaigns to reach these individuals. Former customers who haven’t signed up for your email list can be emailed to join your email list or notified about upcoming promotions. This is one type of digital marketing campaign that could have a big impact in sales and engagement.

3. The fall of “experts”

Many former digital marketing experts are taking down their iconic digital marketing courses and programs in favor of new offerings. This includes Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer who took down his iconic The Napkin Project training program. While some of the change might have to do with their own business trajectory, the market has become saturated with these digital marketing “experts” in a way that makes it difficult to know what to do. Instead, companies are relying on performance data and split testing to see what’s the best way to market their own businesses online.

Digital marketing will continue to be the way that companies are able to market themselves online. With a well thought out plan that includes a little bit of various digital marketing strategies, most companies can find success with digital marketing. As this year’s predictions show, it is important to not invest all of your company’s time and resources into one type of digital marketing. Instead, well rounded strategies will continue to perform best.

Crowdfunding Campaigns

Part Four: How to Write Copy for a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

What you write for your crowdfunding campaign has a lot to do with its success. Nobody wants to support some shoddy cause. Here are some ways to have your crowdfunding campaign’s copy stand out.

Invest Time in Great Writing (Headlines + Body Copy)

While word-of-mouth advertising is important to your success, your written copy will be the most widespread communication method. Crowdfunding platforms, commercials, and most other forms of advertising use written copy to convey information. The writing you have done to promote your cause needs to be high-quality. Most people cannot write on the level needed to create effective, high-quality written copy. Invest in finding and hiring someone to do your written copy who has the experience and the skills to do the best job possible.

This is especially true for your crowdfunding platform and other online channels. They have the potential to reach people around the world and convince them to donate without ever talking to you. You want your headlines and body copy to be the highest quality that you can get to ensure your success.

Describe Exactly What the Money Covers

One of the best ways to ensure that people will donate to your campaign is to tell them exactly what their contributions will do. People don’t donate to problems, they invest in your solutions. You have to explain to them how your solution works and how their donations can help you develop it. Many organizations do this by providing a detailed description of their operations detailing what the organization is doing and how it channels donations to facilitate it. If you can show donors how their efforts will help you solve a problem, they are more likely to donate to your cause.

Use Excellent Photos in the Campaign, Reminder Emails, and Social Media

Next to your written copy, your imagery is the strongest method of communication. People often connect more with pictures than they do with written text. So, you want to use powerful and descriptive photos in your marketing efforts. One good picture can be the difference between a successful campaign and a failing campaign.

Social media and reminder emails are great ways of disseminating information through pictures. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter are exceptional methods of distributing pictures with text that can get donors’ attention. Take advantage of your social media platforms to grow support for you cause by periodically sending updates with eye-catching pictures to get people involved.

How to Promote Your Cause on Social Media

Social media is great for promoting your cause, but there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. You want to focus on providing images and text that can draw a viewer in with a positive mindset. You also want to do it in channels with appropriate context. Sending pictures that are off-putting and negatively provocative in the middle of an Instagram feed for funny memes is the wrong context for your advertisements. Instead, focus on using imagery that gets people interested in a positive way in the channels that your target market uses. Tailor your content to your audience so that you are drawing more people in rather than scaring them away.

At Triassic Media Group, we love writing crowdfunding campaigns. Email us at info@triassicmedia.com for a custom quote for your project.

7 Ways to Come Up With Blog Post Ideas

Do you find it hard to come up with good ideas for blog posts? These ideas may help!

1. Set up Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free Google service. You can set up a Google Alert for anything you want, and you can set up as many of them as you want. If you set them up for your blog topic, you will regularly receive emails that have links to blog posts, news stories and other articles related to your topic. Those articles can be used as reference material for your blog articles or can simply be used to give you more ideas of things to write about.

2. Freewrite

Freewriting is the habit of writing without any real rules. It simply means to write about whatever comes to your mind, and to write consistently and as quickly as possible. It generally helps to set a timer and to write for a specific amount of time each day.

3. Answer questions people ask.

In your business, you likely have heard many different questions that clients or customers ask. Jot those questions down and use them as blog post titles. Simply answer the question in the article. This method is especially great for helping you be found in search engines since many people type questions into Google.

4. Read the news and think through how the various headlines might relate to your niche.

The daily news is an excellent place to get ideas for your blog. You may need to use your imagination a little here, but if you’re always thinking of your blog niche and always on the lookout for more blog post ideas through what you see online, the news will be likely to provide you with an abundance of blog post ideas.

5. Have conversations with people in your niche.

Sometimes conversations with others in your niche will spark ideas of things to blog about. It may be because they inspire you, or it may be because the person says something that makes you mad and you want to write about the opposing view point.

If you don’t have a lot of people in your niche to actually converse with, read blog in your niche and use the thoughts that they provoke to motivate you to write your own blog posts.

6. Get out in nature.

Nature can sometimes be one of the most inspiring places. There is something about nature that brings out the creativity in many of us, so especially if you’re feeling some sort of a blogging slump, spending some time in nature may be just the thing you need to break you out of your writing slump.

7. Exercise

Exercise not only gets the oxygen flowing, but the rhythmic nature of things like walking and jogging can get the wheels turning in your mind. The only problem with getting ideas while you’re exercising is that you may forget them by the time you get back home, so be sure to have something along to record those ideas.

 

<!– Begin MailChimp Signup Form –>
<link href=”//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/horizontal-slim-10_7.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
<style type=”text/css”>
#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; width:100%;}
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
</style>

Download Your Free Marketing Calendar!

</div>
</form>
</div>

<!–End mc_embed_signup–>

 

business management tools

6 Free and Low Cost Business Management Tools

Every small business needs an arsenal of online tools to achieve business success without breaking the bank. In today’s “freemium” world, many companies offer low-cost or even free online management tools that will help you stay sane and effective as a manager while increasing your productivity.

Best of all, they do the job without putting pressure on your pocketbook. Below are six of them worth a serious look.

Box

The ability to efficiently share important files such as spreadsheets, documents and presentations with your team, customers and other partners is crucial. Box, a cloud-based file sharing and storage solution, makes it easy to share files without complicating the way you normally work.

Getting started is a snap: Just drag and drop your content from your desktop to Box, even really large files. Be sure to check out the BoxSync download that lets you keep the content on your computer in sync with Box.

As a small business owner, you can enjoy instantaneous file backup, easy file sharing and the ability to access files from multiple computers and mobile devices.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is all about making accounting fast and simple and was designed specifically around the needs of small business owners.  Just add your customers and you can easily generate professional-looking invoices and send them with the click of a button and even accept online payments.

One of the best things about Freshbooks is that although it’s easy to use, it still boasts a lot of really great features that help you stay organized when it comes to your money. Things such as reports, time tracking and expense tracking. Freshbooks is a cloud service, so your data is backed up and accessible from remote locations.

You also can access Freshbooks from all your favorite gadgets, such as your smartphone or tablet.

Insightly

Providing your customers and prospects with world-class service is something you strive for every day because you know how critical it is. Making sure that you and your team stay on the ball and even improve those efforts, especially as you grow, is a different story.

With the right blend of horsepower and ease of use for small business, Insightly’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can help. It allows you to collect, organize and share important contact information so that you can manage the relationship more successfully and create a better customer experience.

Insightly offers a simple, friendly user-interface, which is huge plus, both for getting set up quickly and for getting familiar with the system. It integrates tightly with tools such as Gmail and Google Apps, so it will work well with systems you already have in place. With built-in project management tools such as tasks, milestones and notifications, you stay organized and deliver on time. Because the information is centralized, everyone on your team who needs to know what is going on can stay in the loop.

A cloud-based system with anytime, anywhere access, Insightly offers modern features demanded by savvy small businesses, such as smartphone access and social media integration.

MeetingBurner

Meetings and conference calls are an integral part of daily business activity. By introducing Web conferencing tools such as MeetingBurner, you can effectively and cheaply connect with customers and other colleagues who are far away.

Save yourself the expense and time involved in a business trip by using the Web for your next meeting. Simply schedule the meeting from within MeetingBurner, add it to your calendar and then email your participants the instructions provided. MeetingBurner automatically generates a conference call line that participants dial into as well as a website link to click on so they can see whatever you want to share with them from your computer.

MeetingBurner works for both Mac and PC, and will even send everyone reminders about upcoming meetings.

Mail Chimp

Email marketing with newsletters can be a terrific, cost-effective way to engage your customers and Mailchimp helps make it all painless and relatively quick. How do you build your list? What do you do when someone doesn’t want to receive emails anymore? What is the appropriate size when you’re designing an email newsletter? How do you know if people are looking at the emails you send? Mailchimp handles all of that for you – and more.

At its core, it helps you build your list, wrap your message in a pretty package, blast it out and track the results of your campaign. Other notable features include the ability to segment your mailing list, so you can target your messages according to the different needs of your customers and to integrate with services already in use by small business everywhere, such as Freshbooks, Google Analytics, Facebook, WordPress and Magento.

HootSuite

Is your small business leveraging multiple social media channels as part of your core marketing strategy? Are you looking for a smarter way to take control of your social media activity? Then give HootSuite a whirl. Hootsuite is a social media management tool that gives you a centralized place for managing, tracking and measuring all of your different social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.

Because Hootsuite is a cloud solution, all you need to access the service is an Internet connection and Web browser. Plus, HootSuite boasts a wide range of mobile apps to help users on the move.

From CRM to email marketing to social media, your small business solutions can be the difference between a smooth sailing enterprise and an ugly crash on the rocks. Fortunately for today’s small business owner, the modern world is competitive. That means more free online management tools than ever before.

client service

How to Go Above and Beyond for Your Clients

The importance of your clients can’t be understated, especially when there’s a great relationship brewing. Sometimes, it’s easy to slip into the comfort where you feel like you can stop bringing roses. Not so! It’s always important to make clients feel special.

Here are five ways you can go above and beyond with your beloved clients.

1. Add a Personal Touch

What better ways to show your clients you really know them by throwing in something personal? When preparing a new business package for a toy company who personally love plastic ghosts, create custom paper to print it on with some ghostly pictures on it. Or, include little puns related to ghosts in your reports. Simply adding little touches like these shows your clients you understand their needs.

2. Aim for Extra Communication

Don’t just stick to business emails or tweets! If you happen to see a funny website you know your client will enjoy, send them a message about it. If your client sells books and you happen to see something about a book bazaar in their town, let them know.

Crossing the line between formal and informal might seem tricky, but in this day and age of social interaction the boundaries have begun to blur. So don’t be afraid to nurture someone-on-one communication with your business associates.

3. Don’t Be Afraid of Real Life

I know we all spend a lot of time in the virtual world, but the outside one offers a lot of opportunities to get to know our clients better, too. If they’re local, invite them to a casual gathering. Having a little fun never hurt anyone, but, of course, keep it civil (unless you both agree to be a sun civil as possible!).

If they’re out of town, arrange a meeting next time you’re in their city, or vice versa!

4. Fixing Problems

If there’s ever a huge issue that comes out with your client, instead of merely satisfying their needs see what more you can do to help ease their suffering. Maybe a pipe burst in their basement and you helped cover some of their business needs while they scrambled to get it fixed. Now, perhaps you can recommend a good plumber and water restoration company?

5. Remember Dates

Everyone likes to get a little recognition on their birthday! Or how about a nice note when your client’s ten year anniversary rolls around? Don’t forget about when your client’s kid graduates from college or gets married, either. If you come across any important dates in your client’s life, add them to your Google Calendar for some easy points later on.

marketing plan

5 Cоmmоn Intеrnеt Mаrkеting Chаllеngеѕ fоr Smаll Buѕinеѕѕеѕ

When small businesses make the decision to grow larger, the Internet is almost vital. Once entering this new playing field, there is a set of unique challenges your business will face. Unfortunately, most small businesses fail in establishing themselves online, largely because they cannot overcome common marketing challenges presented by the Internet’s immense competition.

Being in the fields of web design, content creation and inbound marketing, our team at Bluleadz knows these challenges well. In this blog, we’ve pinpointed the 5 biggest challenges small businesses face when they take their business online.

1. Building a QUALITY Website

Does your web design help or hurt your company? This is an obvious place to start – when a business decides to go online, the first challenge they have is building the best website possible. Most small businesses start looking for professional web designers, who can make sites that both look pleasing aesthetically and navigate properly. This is extremely significant considering business metrics are greatly affected within the first- glance of your site. In fact, “46% of people say a website’s design is their number once criterion for determining the credibility of a company” (Business2Community). Although these are very important things to look for in a website, they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to quality website design.

The best web designers build websites that not only look great and function flawlessly, but are also designed to perform well for business – i.e gaining clients and making money.

2. Creating Valuable Content

Once a small business has a website, the challenge then becomes generating valuable content, which will attract visitors that are interest in (and searching for) your products and services. Creating content that is valuable to your niche industry can be a challenge, as it utilizes a specific skillset. An advanced writing ability is the most essential but video content is becoming increasingly beneficial in reaching viewers, as the Internet continues to grow and transform. It takes a great deal of time and expertise to create high quality content and not all small business owners have the capability to invest in doing so.

Overcoming this challenge usually involves hiring professionals to create content for you. In fact, one of the biggest components of an inbound marketing agency’s work is creating content for clients.

3. Growing an Audience via Social Media

Convert leads into sales with these tips! Once you overcome the challenge of content creation and start publishing material that people in your industry value, the challenge becomes promoting that content. One of the best ways to do this is though social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube. The goal of social media for business is to grown a large audience that is interested in your business, and hook this audience’s attention.

This involves lots of time posting, responding and monitoring influencers in your industry, across all of the social media platforms. It’s time intensive – as we’ve pointed out already, that time is not a commodity for most small business owners. Managing social media accounts and campaigns is another major component of our business. Social media is a core aspect of how companies gain the attention of their leads and future customers.

4. Generating New Leads

Every small business needs a system of generating leads. Consumers almost never make a purchase the first time they go onto a website – you need an opportunity to communicate with them a second time or seventh. To do this, capture contact information, which will kick off a personal relationship between your company and the viewer. You can generate leads in a number of ways, but one of the most prevalent is by giving away free content (e-books, reports, videos, etc.) in exchange for an email address or phone number.

Once you have a lead, you have someone to communicate and share your value with. By moving your leads down the buyer’s journey, they will soon become your customers and invest in your products and services.

5. Converting Leads into Sales

This is the very last step in the sales process, and is so because it’s such a challenge for small businesses online. Online business – actual business where sales are made – requires a great deal of credibility, trust and respect. In order to close the deal in the online marketplace, most small businesses have to overcome the challenge of getting their leads to look up to them as authorities in their niche. Businesses who are to pull this off do so through an array of inbound marketing and educating.

They’re not looking to be sold and they’re not looking for products or services – they’re looking to learn. Pew Research Center found that “86% of consumers stated that using a search engine allowed them to learn something new or important that helped him/her increase his/her knowledge.”

If people in your niche consistently believe they are learning from you, they will eventually look up to you as an authority within your industry, trust and value your business enough to invest money in your products and services.

marketing blog

6 Great Marketing Blogs

When researching to write your own articles – or just educating yourself on trends and best practices in today’s marketing world – it’s important to read a variety of marketing blogs to gather different perspectives and apply them to your campaigns.

The following list are some of our favourite content pieces we read regularly for education, tips, tricks, and more.

1.  HubSpot

Pretty much known for starting the inbound marketing movement, they are giants in the marketing universe. HubSpot has three blogs: marketing, sales, and agency – each targeted to a slightly different audience.

If that’s not enough to satisfy you, their full list of blog topics is sure to have plenty of valuable content for you.

With that three separate blogs and publishing every single day, it’s necessary for them to have many guest blog writers (in addition to their staff) who offer many different perspectives and expertise. In the end, HubSpot’s blog sets the standard for all things inbound marketing and we’re pretty sure their blog is a lead generating machine!

2. Content Marketing Institute

CMI posts a new article every day, even on weekends and holidays. Their “This week in content marketing” series is a hit as they talk about the most recent news and events as it relates to content marketing.

Their most popular blogs are broken out between “Current Hits” and “All Time Hits”. Just like HubSpot and their publishing frequency, they have many different writers that offer expert tips and analysis. (The only distraction is the social widget in the left margin blocking content as you scroll.)

3. Mention

Mention’s blog features a search bar, their featured images on posts are consistent in design, and categories are easily identified across the top of the blog. Categories are easy to sort through and include “Most Popular” and even a “Startup Life” to see what other readers deem as most important for each respective category.

One unique detail is that under each article’s featured image, Mention shows an estimated reading time for the article (smart!).

Posts often follow a how-to style, making it easy to apply what you learn in each article. Even posts that aren’t specifically how-tos often have a wrap-up section that helps you understand how to implement what you read.

To top it off, Mention regularly hosts webinars that tie-in with their blogs very well. Join their next webinar (we’re co-hosting with them!) this Tuesday, January 26th where we talk about letting competitors build your marketing strategy.

4. Autopilot

Autopilot’s “Liftoff” blog is very clean and organized. They have a search bar, publish a few days per week, and are building a great marketing automation tool where you can “automate the customer journey, visually.”

If you’re in the market for a marketing automation product, give Autopilot a serious look. Their visual journeys make planning and executing lead nurturing and onboarding a breeze!

5. Inside AdWords

This is Google AdWords’ official blog offering news, tips, and general information on their advertising platform. They may not publish very often, but when they do, you can bank on it being valuable insight.

If you’re advertising with AdWords, how can you not want to read the content from the original source?

6. Buffer

Buffer are experts in social media publishing. Their blog features big, bold images that are easy to share with your social networks. They keep their content simple and witty, while taking deep dives into data when appropriate and analyze that data very well.

Blog articles also examine large companies or people using social and break down what they are doing well (and sometimes where they could improve). This way, anyone can take the nuggets of information and apply it to their own strategy (smaller case studies, for example).

 

social media

5 Social Media Customer Engagement Tips

Social Media can help you to grow your business – by attracting new customers, by strengthening your relationships with your customers, and by getting customers to refer your business to their friends and colleagues. The key to making this happen is to learn how to use Social Media to engage your customers; to have a conversation with your customers; to learn more about your customers’ needs;  and to help them to see how your business can satisfy their needs. In this article, we’re going to expand on those engagement tips.

1. Finding your customers

The first thing you need to do before engaging customers via social media is to find them! While most of your customers will probably have profiles on several major sites, odds are they either spend most of their time on one site or use them for different purposes (social vs. professional).  Knowing which site (s) they frequent makes it easier to engage them.

The most effective way to know which site your customers come from is closed loop marketing, which is tracking your customers from lead source through customer acquisition. You might think the site that generates the most leads is the best bet, but this isn’t always the case.

If you are unable to close the loop, then you can ask your sales rep to find out from their leads which social media site they use the most. You can also survey your customers if you don’t have a high-touch sales process. Lastly, if all else fails, the general rule of thumb is if you’re B2B, then use LinkedIn. If you’re B2C, use Facebook.

2. Adding Customers to Your Network

After you find your customers, you’ll want to add them to your network, which makes it easier for you to engage them. Unless you have an army of interns that can personally send invites to all your customers, you might want to take a more scalable approach.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to have your sales reps and customer success managers promote a social media account in their email signatures, business cards, etc. If your customers are friends with your employees and your employees share the company blog posts and updates as well as promote your company pages, then it’s easy to reach your customers. Of course, this isn’t always possible, as your employees may be uncomfortable doing this or you may not have 1:1 relationships with your customers.

Some other options are to create your own group and promote it to customers on your website and in product documentation. Just let them know what the group will help them with,such as major news and announcements, strategy guides, customer conversations, feedback, etc. If you don’t want to run a group, then you can always promote your company pages on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Anyone who likes or follows your company will be in your network.

3. Share Great Content

When trying to engage your customers, don’t just share company news or promotions. Make sure you provide valuable content. If you provide content your customers want to read, they’ll keep coming back. You can then work in some marketing messages on occasion, much like a blog.

4. Actively Engage Customers

In addition to sharing content, you also need to engage your customers. If all you do is share content, you’ll still grow your network and you’ll get some readership. However, to really develop customer loyalty, you need to engage your customers so they feel special.

This doesn’t mean sending them messages and posting on their wall like your great friends. However, you do want to communicate with them. If you have a group or forum, don’t just answer questions but try to ask some of your own and generate discussions. Follow your customers and occasionally promote a great blog article they write or re-tweet something they post. Monitor social media in general for any mentions of your business so you can respond.

5. Stick With It

One of the more frustrating things about using social media and content marketing as a way to engage customers is that, more than anything, it takes time. You need to find your customers, get them in your network, engage them, and get them hooked on your content. This doesn’t happen overnight. In the end, the benefits will be well worth it, but you can’t stop a few months in. If you’re not getting results you want, try changing tactics, but don’t stop. If nothing else, think about how your competitors are doing the same thing. So unless you want them having more loyal customers than you, stick with it.