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Blog, Social Media Tips
How to Educate & Entertain Your Prospects with Videos and Images
- by Meaghan
When it comes to building a relationship with your customers, visuals – specifically videos – are your best option. In this Social Media Day Recap, you’ll hear from various experts on how to educate and entertain your prospects with video and images while guiding them through the buyer’s journey. Read on or watch the video below to learn how your brand can build solid relationships with your audience through the use of video content.

How to Invite User-Generated Content on Snapchat

Mark Kaye, a host on the radio station 95.1 WAPE in Jacksonville, is a Snapchat influencer. During his session, he talked about how to involve your viewers and encourage them to create content. User generated content can then be used in other ways. He made a “12 days of Christmas Mash-up” by asking followers to send him one word that they like most about Christmas. He then took all of the clips and pulled them together to make a video.

Casie Shimansky from Cisco discussed their employee advocacy program. They enlist employees to conduct daily takeovers of their Snapchat. Selected employees are given the password to Cisco’s Snapchat and encouraged to post to their story. Their posts include snapshots of their days while working at Cisco, their favorite products, and more.

Focus on a Problem in Your YouTube Videos

Roberto Blake is a Designer, YouTube Creator, and Marketing Consultant. He recently hit the mark of 1,000 YouTube videos on his channel. Roberto noted how 80% of adults over 25 years old are watching videos on YouTube. To build your brand on YouTube, he recommends owning a problem.

You can look at YouTube as oversaturated, or work to own the problem or solution that your company solves. If you’re not sure what to create your videos about, Roberto recommends starting with a Twitter search of #_____problems (fill in the blank with your industry). Try to address every stage of the buyer’s journey. Create content answering your company’s FAQs to save your sales team time from answering the same questions over and over again.

How 100 Facebook Live Videos in a Month Evolved to Two a Week

Nasdaq’s Head of Social Media, Anna Gonzalez spoke about how they’re using Facebook Live in their content strategy. Their social team consists of three people, but that didn’t stop them from creating 100 videos in one month. A few other months they were pretty high up there with their video count too. They’ve scaled back now and publish about two a week, but they collected a lot of data to analyze during those high volume months.

Anna pointed out that a view is counted after three seconds of a person watching your video. Keep this in mind when analyzing your own videos. Experimentation on Facebook Live is a must, especially with their ever-changing algorithms.

Influencer Marketing and Instagram

Marketing expert Kenny Harper is Co-Founder of Rock My Image in Jacksonville. He talked about influencer marketing and how 92% of those who have worked with influencers see it as successful. To be the best influencer you can be, he says to be consistent. That doesn’t mean daily postings but stick to a schedule.

Chad Israel from Hertz Rent a Car gave real-life examples of how their brand is partnering with influencers. There doesn’t have to be an exchange of money; many influencers will collaborate on a trade if what you are offering is valuable to them. In their case, a rental car. Working with influencer Matt Pierce, Hertz invested about $3,000 in trading a car for two months. Chad said that the return on investment was about $200,000! That’s from images and video assets that the influencer created. This example showed that you don’t need a huge budget to work with influencers.

The final speaker at Social Media Day Jacksonville was Curtis Midkiff from Southwest Airlines. Previously a DJ, his entrance with a Yankees cap and Jay-Z playing in the background only made sense. Curtis reminded everyone about social listening to gauge audience sentiment. He said you need to have a plan but be flexible, adapting as necessary.

Tieing back to part one of my recaps, Carlos Gil said, “The word fun is often lost in marketing.” When creating content of any kind remember to make it enjoyable. People don’t want to see advertisements. But if you make it a pleasurable experience, they may not be so apt to jump away to the next thing online.

[bctt tweet=”The word fun is often lost in marketing. – @carlosgil83 #SMDayJAX” username=”meaghanmae”]

Read and/or watch part one of my Social Media Day Jacksonville Recap: Biggest Takeaway from Social Media Day Jacksonville – Video is a Major Key

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Blog, Social Media Tips
Biggest Takeaway from Social Media Day Jacksonville – Video is a Major Key
- by Meaghan
Attending Social Media Day Jacksonville reiterated one thing for me – videos and images are the best way to connect with your audience in 2017. Speakers included social media executives at Nasdaq, Southwest Airlines, Cisco, and online influencers like Carlos Gil and Amy Scmittauer who are major proponents of video. Established eight years ago by Mashable, Social Media Day is an event that’s held on June 30th in many cities across the country. This was Jacksonville’s first thanks to the efforts of host and keynote speaker Carlos Gil who planned the event.

With it fresh on my mind that video is the way to go, I wanted to create a vlog for my experience at Social Media Day Jacksonville. Check out part one of my video recap below, or continue reading this blog post to hear more.

Using Snapchat to Reach Your Brand’s Target Audience

Let’s start with a few quick facts from Carlos about Snapchat:
- There are over 150 million active Snapchat users
- The platform reaches 41% of millennials
- 77% of users are over 18
- People use it to connect with friends and see what they’re sharing (think rainbow vomit filters and puppy dog ears)
One of Carlos Gil’s many references to DJ Khaled.

With all of that in mind, he pointed out that Snapchat is simply not the place to sell. Shaun Ayala, another Snapchat influencer, gave a few creative ways to use the platform. For example, by incorporating the tap feature that takes you to the next Snap, you can show a visual progression. Another idea he had was to offer wallpaper through screenshots. These can be created on Canva or another design software, or if you’re very artistic, within Snapchat using the various features.

Shaun Ayala speaking about effective strategies for Snapchat

Something many of us forget is the option to delete. Shaun said not to be afraid of deleting part of your story. Just because you posted, it doesn’t mean it has to stay there. If it doesn’t fit within the story you’re telling – delete it.

[bctt tweet=”Don’t be afraid to delete part of your story. – @ShaunAyala #SMDayJAX” username=”meaghanmae”]

Making the Most of YouTube

Amy Schmittauer, the host of Savvy Sexy Social, is a well-known YouTube influencer. As the second largest search engine in the world, I think she’s on to something by focusing her efforts on YouTube. Amy talked about the importance of having a home base to send people. This could be your website and blog or main social channel (in her case YouTube).

Amy Schmittauer presenting at Social Media Day Jax 2017.

An actionable tip from Amy that you can use when you’re creating any form of content is to segment your topics by day. Perhaps you only do how to videos on Monday, reviews on Wednesday, and interviews on Friday. This way when you’re thinking about what to create, you have a starting point.

[bctt tweet=”Consumers are not loyal to one particular platform. – @carlosgil83 #SMDayJAX” username=”meaghanmae”]

As we’ve all heard many times now, you have about eight seconds to grab your audience’s attention. And, if they don’t know you, you have about 2-5 minutes to hold their attention if you’re an unknown. So creating 15 minute long videos is probably not a good idea until you have a solid following. Hence, why this video is less than five minutes long, and why you’ll have to wait for part two to hear about the key takeaways from the other speakers.

I finally met Carlos Gil after following his social media posts for the last two years.

What creative ways are you connecting with your audience on social media? Have you started to use video yet? Let me know in the comments below.

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Blog, Marketing
Top 3 Marketing Tips for Yoga Teachers
- by Meaghan
Are you struggling to fill your classes to capacity? One of the biggest marketing mistakes yoga instructors make is not sharing their classes, events, and workshops enough. If your students don’t know you’re teaching, then you can’t expect them to show up.

“You cannot serve people if they don’t know you exist.”
~ Lenka Stefanakova

It can feel weird promoting yourself, but someone has to do it. If you get queasy at the thought of self-promotion consider what Sage Rountree said in this blog post for Yoga Journal, “understand that you are not promoting yourself, you are promoting your work, and your work is bringing yoga’s benefits to your students.”

Being a yoga teacher is a job, and you should be thinking of it as a business. Companies advertise their products and services, and you should be doing the same. Here are my top three marketing tips for independent yoga teachers to put into action this year.

Use More Visuals

Visual content including images, videos, infographics, etc. are a few of the best mediums to communicate with your students. Images and infographics can be easily created using Canva. Here’s an example of one I created.

If you’re a little leery of creating videos, it’s time to take a deep breath and hit that Live button. Animoto reported that “four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.” Local St. Augustine yoga teacher Rachel Layne posted this video to Instagram last week promoting her Vinyasa Flow class.

After sharing your visual content via social media or your blog don’t forget to include it in an email. Simply including the word “video” in the subject line of an email can increase your open rates by 19%! That’s huge when the average open rate in the fitness industry is only about 22% according to MailChimp.

And don’t forget about flyers. As much as we all love our digital toys, people are still walking around in the real world. A few places you can post your flyers at include the grocery store, local restaurants, the post office, or health food stores. Don’t forget an eye-catching yoga image that reflects your classes.

Guest Writing

Consider pitching an idea to a local newspaper. If your yoga classes are more on the gentle side and geared towards seniors, you’ll have a better chance of reaching them through a print article than something posted online. Another perk is that the newspaper likely has an online version too.

Local businesses that have a blog could also be open to guest postings. Bonus points if you can find someone in the same industry that attracts your type of client, but isn’t a competitor. For yoga teachers, this could be a health food store or metaphysical shop. Contributing an article will build your credibility as an expert in the field and introduce you to a new audience.

Build Relationships

Connect with other teachers and attend their classes. Share a photo on social media of you and the teacher after class; you can even include a quick blurb on how you enjoyed the practice. They’ll appreciate the shout out and likely reciprocate the action in the future. Same goes for sharing other teachers’ events.

Being out there on the mat in the student role can help you build a connection with the community of students too. Practicing beside them allows them to feel your energy and gives you the opportunity to build a relationship. The conversation will likely lead to you revealing that you’re a teacher (if they didn’t already know) and when your class is held.

Post your schedule to your website, share it on social media regularly – not just once a month, and talk about it whenever you have a chance. Remember to remind your students at the beginning or end of class about your upcoming workshops or classes. If you teach more than one class a week at that studio, make sure to mention your other class(es).

Do you have any other marketing advice you’d like to share with our community of yoga teachers? If so, post it in the comments section.

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Blog, Social Media Tips
3 Ideas to Borrow From Yoga & Apply to Your Social Media Marketing
- by Meaghan
Looking at the parallels between yoga and social media might sound unnatural to many. But as a yoga instructor and social media professional, it seems normal. Here are three parts of yogic thought that can be rolled into how you approach social media in your business.

-Centering
-Drishti (focus)
-Pranayama (breathing)

Now let’s take a closer look at each one.

Centering

Centering or meditation often starts out yoga classes. It’s meant to bring you into your space, allow the mind to calm, and create a sense of body awareness. Centering is also the time when the teacher lets you know what you’ll be doing in the class, a plan so to speak. In social media listening and planning should be the first steps.

While practicing yoga the practitioner aims to quiet the mind. Social listening requires silencing your initial ideas of what to share and rather listening and analyzing what others in your industry are saying and talking about first.

You should pay attention to:

-What questions is your target audience asking?
-What problems need solutions?
-What real-time events are happening that can allow you to enter a conversation?

Drishti (focus)

The dancer pose is one of many asanas that requires a focused gaze, or a Drishti, to maintain balance. Without focus, you will wobble from side to side and fall out of the posture.

In social media, you must have a focus too. Otherwise, you can get pulled in various directions. Keep a business goal in mind as you utilize social media.

Some companies use social media mainly for customer service reasons; others use it to increase brand awareness and for lead generation, etc. Be sure to establish your primary objective when starting to use social media in your business.

Pranayama (breathing)

Each inhale has an exhale, just as each interaction deserves a reaction from the brand. Maybe the reaction is a quick tweet to thank someone for sharing your content, simply a like, or perhaps you respond with a question asking what the person’s biggest takeaway is. Just as there are different types of responses to an interaction, there are many different pranayama techniques.

Approach social media marketing as you would a headstand. Prepare a plan, stay focused, and keep breathing.

If you need assistance with your social media plan, shoot me an email or give me a call. Let’s work together to get your yoga business discovered by more students!

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Blog, Social Media Tips
How to Create Graphics with Canva to Up Your Social Media Game
- by Meaghan
Are you ready to up your social media game with visuals, but don’t know where to start? Maybe you have ideas, but no experience with Photoshop or other design programs. I have a free and easy solution to your problems. Small business owners, meet Canva – a free, web-based design tool.

{Side note: I have no affiliation to Canva. This is not a sponsored post. I just wanted to share this awesome tool and what it can do.}

In Canva you can create social media visuals, presentations, brochures, letterheads, eBooks and more. Their drag and drop feature combined with the free (and paid) layout designs make creating your next attention grabbing image a breeze.

Here’s a SlideShare I created for Bernie Borges at Social Business Engine using Canva. The mass number of available features is impressive and allows for customization in every degree.

Other projects I’ve created using Canva include Instagram images, infographics, Facebook images, Twitter images, and more. I designed these images for Social Business Engine‘s Instagram.
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Here are 4 ideas to kickstart your social media image creations and increase brand awareness:

1) Quotes
2) Blog titles
3) Events (virtual or in-person)
4) Holiday greetings

Once you’re registered with Canva and logged in, consult the below infographic (also created on Canva) for the next steps to quickly creating your new design.

For those of you that simply don’t have the time to create your images, contact me. Let’s discuss getting your brand noticed with some new graphic images for social media.

How do you plan to use Canva?
If you’re already using it, what are some of your favorite features?

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Blog
Why You Need a Blog for Your Business
- by Meaghan
If you have a website, you should have a blog. If you don’t have a website — get one already! In today’s world, everything is online. People Google everything from the time of the sunset, to what Angelina Jolie wore to the Emmys this year.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and humanizing your brand are two of the main reasons why you should be doing content marketing at your organization. Let’s explore these two topics in a little more detail…

Search

Having just a website isn’t enough anymore. The website acts more like a placeholder if you don’t post often to your site. For some businesses that might be fine, your information is on the site and people can call you if they need you, understood. But with a blog, Google and other search engines will come back often to “crawl” your site and increase your ranking in their search results. For example, if someone searches “Cupcake shop in St. Augustine” and there is more than one cupcake bakery in town, the one with regular blog posts is more likely to come up first in the list of results.

Humanize Your Brand

In addition to having a blog to increase your searchability, it will also give you more of a chance to connect with your customers. People are more conscious of who they are buying from now than ever, they want to know who is the owner of the cupcake shop and how they got into the business. So tell them in a blog! There are many things you can blog about to keep in contact with your clients and prospects that will help build a relationship with them.

Do you have a business blog? How often do you post to it?

If you are interested in getting a new blog started for your site, or would like to outsource your blog posts, email me and let’s talk about it.

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Tidal Creative Group is among the top digital marketing agencies in St. Augustine, Florida, and proudly serves clients in St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach, Palm Coast, Jacksonville (Jax), Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Flagler Beach, Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Orange Park, Macclenny, Middleburg, St. Johns, Keystone Heights, Palatka, Panama City, Gainesville, Orlando, Brunswick, Macon, St. Marys, Waycross. We also provide marketing services to clients all over the United States. Tidal Creative Group is a woman-owned business.