Does video marketing have to cost you a lot of money?

One of the main reasons why your competitors probably don’t do video marketing is because of their fear of cost and probably not due to their inability to appreciate the power of video marketing.

The video marketing field brings a lot of value to the table but people have all sorts of misconceptions regarding the costs of video marketing. They can see the benefits with no problem. What they’re unclear on is whether the costs would justify the benefit.

Most video marketing attempts fail the first time.

What clouds this whole picture is the fact that when you try anything the first time around and you don’t have some sort of blueprint or plan your chances of failure are quite high.

Example: Maybe you’re trying to ride a bike. Maybe you’re trying to build a house or an addition. Maybe you’re trying to do a painting or you’re trying to sculpt. I am almost guaranteeing that your first few attempts are not going to be all that good. Why should video marketing be any different? When people just jump in with both feet because they get all excited about the benefits of video marketing, they might end up making mistakes. Why? They did not have proper guidance and that’s the good news here.

With the proper blueprint or coaching or video marketing consulting, you don’t have to commit those beginner mistakes. Your videos don’t have to look amateurish and basic. You can come up with something truly professional the first time around. It’s not uncommon for small businesses to get out of the gate with really high-quality videos that connect powerfully with their target audience members. This is not an issue of cost but more of information.

There are many ways to solve the video marketing problem.

One of the main reasons a lot of people have this idea that video marketing has to cost a lot of money is the misconception that they have to produce Hollywood or Madison Avenue-level videos. Wrong. In fact, in certain niches, audiences respond favorably to very amateurish or very basic videos. You just have to know your niche. More specifically, you just have to know how to segment and break up your niche into little sub-markets. Put simply, the better you know your audience the more powerful your video can be and has nothing to do with how polished or smooth it is. Instead it has everything to do with your video’s ability to communicate with your target audience members on a very human, personal, and emotional level.

There are many tools you can use.

Another piece of good news. You can drastically reduce your video production costs by understanding that there are many different levels of videos. At the top of this hierarchy, of course, are high-quality videos. These are very personal, these are professionally shot, and these are your meat and potatoes videos. These are the kind of videos that champion your brand, but the levels beneath this kind of video are not as quality intensive.

You can use the software to crank out a video for supplemental marketing. You can use software for video that is intended to supplement or support your text content. The relationship with these different video levels goes a long way in reducing your overall cost.

Keep the facts above in mind if you are still on the fence regarding video marketing. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t have to cost a lot.

You might find these articles helpful:

• 5 Tips for Highly Effective Video Marketing Scripts
• Video Marketing: How to Successfully Market to Social Media
• The Importance of Video Marketing Even if You’re Camera-Shy
• Catch the Video Marketing Wave

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The Art of Selecting Top-Notch Curated Content for Facebook Page Marketing

If you’re looking for ways to improve your Facebook page, one option is to focus on the quality of the content you share. This means sourcing or creating content that is interesting, useful, and engaging for your audience.

One way to ensure that the content you share is top-notch is to curate it. Curating content simply means finding and sharing the best content from other sources. This can be a great way to supplement your own content and provide your audience with a steady stream of high-quality content.

Publish the curated content on your page and study your statistics very carefully.

• Which of your posts gets shared the most?
• Which ones get commented on the most?
• Which ones get liked the most?

Pick out these winning pieces of content. Then look for related or similar types of curated content and publish those on your site.

How to Pick the Best Content

It’s one thing to say that you’re going to pick the best content your competitors have, it’s another to actually do it the right way. The big danger here is you’re going to be using your opinion as to what “the best content” means.

What’s the Winning Strategy?

People don’t care about what you like or don’t like. What they care about is what they like. So, how do you use this as a winning strategy? It’s actually pretty simple.

• Look at your competitors’ Facebook pages and scan through their posts. Which of their posts is the most popular? Which of their posts gets shared a lot, gets the most likes, or gets the most comments?
• Pull the link for those posts and post them on your website. See if you get the same level of engagement. If you do this enough times with many different competitors’ contents, certain patterns emerge.

You would quickly realize that the audience you’ve built up to this point is more likely to engage with certain types of content than others. You figure out what works and you ditch everything else. Focus on the stuff that works, and then you scale them up.

You publish more of it and eventually, you come up with your own version. It’s not a question of hunches or guesses. You have to look at objective indications of popularity such as page likes, comments, shares, and other types of engagement.

If you do this right, you will be able to put up a fairly compelling Facebook page that can lead to conversions later on.

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Sadly, that’s precisely how too many Facebook marketers defined ‘curated content.’ They just find content that seems to be related to their niche and run with it. In fact, many think that as long as a piece of content has its target keywords in the titles of blog posts and articles, this is ‘good enough.’ Unfortunately, ‘good enough’ is never good enough in the dog-eat-dog world of Facebook content marketing. Nothing but the best will do.

Instead, you need to identify your competitors’ best content, as well as highly popular content produced by third parties. You use these materials to test your page in terms of response. If you notice that a lot of your page fans respond better to a specific type of content, then you need to produce more of that content.

You need to either find other third-party content you can curate, or you can come up with your own stuff. Whatever the case may be, this is a simple example of finding what works. When you start your page, you really don’t know what will work. You don’t even know if enough people would like your page. What’s important is you keep showing content out there to the extent that some people would engage with it. Some people might like it enough, that they would like your page. When enough time passes, you should be able to see certain patterns. You should be able to see which pieces of content are your most successful posts. You publish this type of content more often to see if you can maintain your engagement level. If that’s the case, then find more of the same type of content, come up with your own version, and increase your engagement levels.

This will also enable you to get more likes on your page. How? Since you know what type of content is popular and what kind of themes and topics keep coming up, you can target the interests of your average user and drive traffic using Facebook’s lookalike audience feature.

Engagement is the linchpin of successful content. Don’t just focus on getting likes though. You should scale up your engagement types and intensity. Focus first on likes. Once you achieve a high enough level, encourage your readers to post comments. Keep running experiments. Once you get them to post lots of comments, go to the next level and encourage them to share. Make no mistake, user engagement is no different than traffic – you have to optimize it. You have to scale it up. You have to fine-tune it so it eventually leads to your ultimate goal: conversions. This is the part of the process that actually produces money in your bank account. This is where things get real.

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Content makes the web go round. If you want more traffic, if you want more loyal visitors and if you want better search rankings, you need content. This is even truer on social media. Sharing your own content is perhaps the best social media strategy. As well as if other people share it with their networks, too. This can result in potentially exponential gains that massively accelerate your growth. But how do you write content in such a way that people will want to share it?

Tip #1: Make it Specific – The single most powerful tip I can possibly share on this topic is to aim your content at someone specific. That means that it should be tailored for your ‘persona’ – the demographic that you think will want to read your content. This works because it leverages the communicative nature of social media. Generally, we share content with someone to show that we are thinking of them or we share it generally because it in some way reflects our personality. For either of these things to work, you first need to write your content in such a way that it will specifically appeal to that certain type of person.

Tip #2: Facilitate Discussion – Another tip is to facilitate discussion or to make your post something that can be used as part of the discussion. Making your post something that asks a challenging question and takes a potentially controversial stance is one way to do that. A safer way is to make a post that can explain a topic or back up an argument, thereby making it something that people can share with their friends or people in online communities when they’re having discussions.

Tip #3: Choose the Right Images – The right images go a long way to making your content more sharable and engaging. Did you know that a lot of the time, people click ‘like’ or ‘share’ before they’ve even read the content? In that case, they’re going off of the title and the image alone. So make sure your image says something and really jumps out.

Tip #4: Choose the Right Title – With that in mind, you of course also need the right title. What is a good title for social media? Clickbait titles work very well but are frowned upon for being spammy. So learn from them, don’t copy them. Make your titles emotionally resonant, unique and interesting while having something of importance to deliver on when people click!

Mistakes can limit your online growth. Start with putting these 4 tips for writing sharable content to use. You will soon see a difference in your online presence and engagement.

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As the old saying goes, time is money. And nowhere is that truer than in the world of social media marketing. The fact is, the faster you can grow your social media following, the better. Why? Because the bigger your social media audience, the more people you can reach with your message. And the more people you reach, the more sales you’ll ultimately make. So, how can you accelerate your social media marketing efforts and get more followers in a shorter period of time?

Here are four tips that will help you do just that…

• Use Tools to Automate and Simplify Your Social Media Marketing – There are a number of great tools out there that can help you automate and simplify your social media marketing. Buffer and Hootsuite are two of the most popular ones.

  With these kinds of tools, you can schedule your social media posts in advance, so you don’t have to worry about posting in real time. You can also use scheduling tools within your social media accounts. This way, you can focus on other aspects of your business, safe in the knowledge that your social media marketing is taken care of.

• Use Images and Videos – Another great way to get more followers is to include images and videos in your posts. Studies have shown that posts with images or videos get significantly more engagement than those without. So, make sure you’re using a mix of both in your social media marketing.

• Use Hashtags – Hashtags are a great way to get more eyes on your posts. When you use relevant hashtags, your posts show up in the feed of anyone who’s following that hashtag. This gives you a great opportunity to get your message in front of a whole new audience.

• Use Calls to Action – Finally, make sure you’re using calls to action in your posts. Asking your followers to like, share, or comment on your posts is a great way to increase engagement and get more people talking about your brand.

 “Being famous on Tik Tok is basically the same thing as being rich on Monopoly.”

~Unknown

Content curation is the process of finding, selecting, and sharing content that is relevant to a specific audience or topic. When used for social media marketing, content curation can help you build a following, engage your audience, and create valuable content for your brand.

Here are some tips for curating content for social media marketing:

• Know Your Audience – Before you start curating content, it’s important to know who your audience is and what they’re interested in. This will help you find content that is relevant and engaging for them. You can use social media analytics to get an idea of the demographics of your followers and what kinds of content they engage with.

• Find High-Quality Content – When you’re curating content, it’s important to find sources that produce high-quality content that is relevant to your audience. A good way to find these sources is to follow influencers in your industry and see what content they share. You can also use Google and social media search engines to find content related to your keywords.

• Curate a Mix of Content – Don’t just share content from one source or type of content. Curate a mix of content from different sources and types to keep your audience engaged. This could include blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, etc.

• Add Your Own Commentary – When you share content, add your own commentary to give it context and help your followers understand why it’s valuable. You can also use content curation as an opportunity to share your own opinions and ideas related to the topic.

• Share Regularly – Content curation is only effective if you’re sharing content regularly. Plan out a content calendar and schedule your content ahead of time so you can be consistent with your sharing.

If you’re looking to grow your social media following, consider using some of these tips. Engage with your audience by posting interesting and relevant content. Make sure to post regularly, and use hashtags to reach a wider audience. Use social media ads to target specific demographics, and partner with influencers to help promote your content. With a little effort, you can soon see a significant increase in your social media following.

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You can have the biggest budget in the world to pay for Facebook Ads but if you don’t have the kind of design that will resonate with your target audience, you’re wasting your money.

Ad design is a very important aspect of Facebook Ads. Not only does Facebook allow you to advertise in a variety of formats, but they also give you a very thorough reporting tool so you can see which ads are working and which ads aren’t. When you have this information at hand, you can easily adjust your design so you can increase your click-through rates and your conversions.

Here are a few ad design strategies you can use to optimize your Facebook Ads:

• Use High-Quality Images
• No one likes to look at images that look like it’s been shot by a 3-year-old. Messy amateur shots are the biggest pet peeves of Facebook users. They see enough amateur photos from their friends’ updates. So you need to use high-quality images to catch their attention. The photos you take yourself are best.

• Use Location-Specific Images
• If you’re targeting a local area, you should use local images. Or you can shoot a video in a popular local hangout. When people see you know their area intimately, they’ll like you immediately. It’s refreshing to see an ad that offers up something not many other advertisers do – like capturing the local scenery. It’s much easier to relate to something local than something that’s thousands of miles away.

• Use Visual Contrast, Filters or Overlays
• Even if you aren’t artistic by nature, you can use photo editing software with nice filters on it. If you aren’t confident in your skills, you can look up some inspiration online. Check out popular graphic design sites, find the kind of designs you think your audience will like and use that as inspiration to come up with your own design.

• Use Carousel Ads to Create a Visual Story
• When done right, carousel ads can actually tell a story. You just need to have a series of interconnected images that form part of a whole picture. People love stories. Try to think of a twist to your story to get them engaged with your advertisement.

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If you want more free traffic from Facebook then the best way to do this is to increase the amount of engagement that you get with your posts. Engagement is an action that a Facebook user takes with respect to your posts. The most popular forms of engagement are commenting, liking your posts and sharing them but engagement can take other forms such as clicking links and tagging you in other posts. All of this engagement helps you to improve your organic reach.

• Perfect Posting Times – It is just common sense – if you add your posts at the times when your audience is the most active then you significantly increase your chances of getting more shares, likes and comments. Fortunately, there is data-driven research to help you identify the best social media posting times so that you can align your posting schedule with these. Read more.

• Fan-Centric Content – Do you give your audience what they really want on Facebook? Most marketers don’t do this and then wonder why their engagement levels are so low. Let’s say that you are a local restaurant using Facebook for marketing. Does that mean that everything you post has to be about food or drink – no certainly not! Read more.

• Identify Your Popular Posts – If you have been making posts on Facebook for a while then you can easily identify which of your posts were the most popular with your audience. By looking inward like this you can see what type and format of content really resonate with your audience. Read more.

• Get Your Photo House in Order – Facebook users will always be more attracted to good-looking visuals. The vast majority of content on the platform is image based. The reason is obvious – it is a lot more interesting than a bunch of text or a boring link. So one of the easiest things that you can do to increase your engagement on Facebook is to get your photo house in order. Read more.

• Make Responding to Comments a Priority – Research has shown that businesses that respond to comments on their posts have a lot more success on Facebook than those that don’t. A lot of the time a comment is actually a question from someone in your target audience. Other people will have the same question in their mind so by answering this you will make a lot of your audience happy. Read more.

• Align Your Website Content With What Works Well on Facebook – You want to get as many shares, likes and comments as possible on Facebook. The more shares, likes and comments you have, the more you will know that the content that you are providing is resonating with your audience. You are giving them what they want. Read more.

• Use a Compelling Call to Action on Your Posts – If you want people to take action on Facebook (or online in general) then you need to tell them what to do. Some people are uncomfortable with this but it is true and you need to do it. You need to include a call to action (CTA) with your posts. Read more.

• Use Video – Videos are immensely popular on Facebook. Facebook users consume over 8 billion videos each day. The simple fact is that users would much sooner watch a short video than read a lot of text. You could call this laziness, but often it will be preferable or more convenient for the user to consume your content in this way. Read more.

• Make Your Posts Short – Facebook users do not want to read long posts. You will get far more engagement if you keep your posts brief. If you need to explain something in detail then create a brief post and a link to your website where more information is available. Read more.

• Know What Your Audience Wants – Facebook Insights can provide you with the information that you need to understand your audience. Do not overlook this powerful resource as it can provide you with a lot of detail that you probably won’t have been expecting which you can use to connect better with your audience in the future. Read more.

• Ask Your Audience a Question – Not enough Facebook marketers do this. Facebook users like responding to questions. It’s human nature to provide an answer when you are asked a question. When you ask the right questions you will find that your audience responds with a lot of comments. Read more.

• Facebook Stories – When you create good Facebook stories you will build a stronger desire within your audience to see more of your content. Some users will spend time on your Facebook Page checking out previous posts that they missed. Read more.

Increasing your engagement is the best way to get more free traffic from Facebook. Implement these techniques starting today and watch your engagement levels soar – and your free traffic, too.

Whether you’re too short on time or just don’t want to do it, contact us and we’ll take care of it for you.

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How to Create Great Images for Your Facebook Ads
When scrolling through your Facebook home feed, some ads will instantly catch your eye, whereas others you’ll simply pass by.

So what is the difference between these? Which ones really grab your attention and which ones fail to make any impression? Often, the difference comes down to the image that is used. While a headline can make a big difference too, an image can convey a lot more information in a much shorter time and as such is potentially more impressive when it comes to quickly getting us to sit up and take note.

This then begs the question as to what it is exactly about certain images that make us pay attention. And how can you channel this in your own advertising campaigns in order to ensure that you get the maximum bang for your buck?

Images That Grab Attention
The first thing to think about is what type of image gets us to look up in the first place. Studies show for example that images of people are more likely to get us to pay attention than any other object or subject matter. We are simply hardwired to pay attention to faces and other humans because it has clear evolutionary value.
The other type of image that grabs attention is anything that uses highly contrasting colors. If your images are bright red or yellow, then this will make them pop off the page more. Red in particular always makes us take notice and this works particularly well on a light blue/white background.

Tell a Story
Getting attention is your first objective. Getting your audience to actually engage with the advertisement and consider clicking it is the next. To do this, it can help to try and tell a story through your image. Don’t simply show what it is you want your audience to think about but instead try to evoke it and hint at it. For example, if your ad was about a party, then it might actually work better to show a lipstick-stained glass rather than showing the party itself. This forces the viewer to imagine what the image is trying to show, which instantly grabs their attention and makes them more inclined to actually think about your ad versus scrolling past.

What you want them to imagine meanwhile is always going to relate to your value proposition. In other words, ask yourself what kind of lifestyle is linked to your product and how you want your audience to feel looking at it.

You might also enjoy reading:

Creating a Great Logo for Your Social Media Brand

8 Tips to Reach More People With Social Media Marketing

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Top Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram

Instagram is all about showing off a way of life and using glamorous-looking pictures to make your products and services incredibly desirable. While this is true though, it’s also only one part of how you can use Instagram to succeed and grow your business.

At the end of the day, you can have the most inspiring Instagram account in the world but if no one knows about it, you aren’t going to be very successful.

So, the question is: how do you go about growing your Instagram account and how do you make sure that you find the right followers? Read on and we’ll look at some of the best strategies you can use.

Integrating Your Instagram With Your Existing Marketing

Hopefully, you will already have some form of marketing and this will most likely involve a website, a Facebook account, Twitter and more.

One thing you can do right away to grow your Instagram account is to bring in visitors from those other channels. One simple way to do this is to add a button on your website that people can click in order to follow you on Instagram. This way, the more people you bring to your website, the more you will be able to grow your Instagram account. This will then also work in reverse; so that as your Instagram account grows, you are able to send more and more people back to your website!

Likewise, use IFTTT (If This, Then That) in order to publish your Instagram pictures straight to your Twitter account. You can also get plugins that will show your Instagram pictures in the sidebar on your website, thereby helping more people to see the kind of content you are sharing there.

Ask People to Follow You!

This sounds a little too simplistic to be effective but in fact, that is exactly why this is such a good strategy! One of the very best ways to get more people to follow you on Instagram is simply to ask them to go and check out your page. Just say at the end of your next YouTube video: ‘why not check out my account over at Instagram?’. You can do the same thing with blog posts.

Socialize

At the end of the day, Instagram is a social media platform and that means that it is a communication tool. Use it as such by making sure to comment on photos that other users have taken or to like them.

Research shows that Instagram users find it flattering when brands like their pictures. And chances are that when they are flattered, they will want to check out exactly who it is that likes their photos!

Influencer Marketing

One of the very most effective ways to grow on Instagram is to team up with other creators and promote each other. This is called Instagram marketing and when done well, it will give you instant access to a huge audience that the other creator has spent time growing.

If you need help with your social media marketing, let us know.

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If you’re posting regularly to an Instagram account with beautiful images and you still aren’t seeing growth, you might understandably find yourself feeling frustrated. You may think Instagram just isn’t right for your business or that you’re doing something wrong.
Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that organic growth on Instagram takes time. With that said though, here are five tips that can make a big difference and ensure you grow that bit more quickly.

• Use Portrait Orientation – Taking photos with portrait orientation is generally considered the best practice in Instagram marketing. If not portrait, you should at least choose square images. This way, your image will stay on the page longer while the users are vertically scrolling, meaning more engagement and hopefully more likes. Canva provides a preset size for Instagram photos.

• Post at the Right Time – Posting at the right time of day has been shown to be hugely important when it comes to your Instagram success. You will maximize the number of people who are awake and who are using the app. Research suggests that posting some time between 10 am and 3 pm on a weekday will net you the best results. BUT this doesn’t account for global time differences. If you’re aiming for a global audience, then posting at 6 pm GMT might just be the smarter strategy.

• Post Frequently – Ideally you should be posting 2-3 times per day. This will ensure that there is a steady flow of content on your site and that it doesn’t seem as though the page has been abandoned. What’s more though, is that posting this regularly will mean almost all of your viewers will see at least one image from you per day.

• Use Hashtags – Hashtags make a big difference on Instagram. Make sure you use them often and use them well. Use 3 to 5 hashtags and as many as 30 in order to maximize your chances of a big hit. Find the sweet spot in terms of popularity too – 30,000 is a good number of posts to see.

• Choose Your “Look” (Brand) – Many accounts are all over the place, with every image they post looking completely different and the end result being a page that has no consistency. Making sure the majority of your images have a consistent look – even picking the same filter for every photo – can prevent this issue and help people to better understand what you’re about and whether they should follow.

Use these 5 tips to find better success with your Instagram marketing efforts. And, if you ever need help with your social media marketing, just call us at (928) 692-3235 or complete the form below and we’ll contact you.

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