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Social Media Tips

Blog, Local Marketing, Social Media Tips
10 Ideas to Improve Your Local Social Media Marketing
- by Meaghan
Restaurants, retail stores, and many service-based companies rely on local customers to succeed in business. If you’re seeing more social media engagement from people across the country than from those in your region, your approach may require some tweaks.

According to Clutch, 24% of small businesses have yet to use social media. Even though this number is relatively low, I’m still shocked. They’re missing a massive opportunity by not having a social media presence, especially if they don’t have a website up either.

Search “restaurants near me” on Google, and it’s likely that many of the results on the first page are from Yelp, OpenTable, or Facebook. A video from YouTube – the second largest search engine after Google – may have a spot there too.

Ready to reach more local customers? Below I list ten ways to use local social media marketing to benefit your small business.

Targeting a Local Audience on Social Media

When creating a Facebook Page, adding the minimum information and starting to post content without a strategy is NOT the way to approach social media.

The insights I’m sharing about local social media marketing are the same tactics I use when managing social media accounts for clients whose success depends on regional customers.
1. GEOTAG LOCATIONS
  Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer the option to tag your location when posting content. Not only should you be using this feature to tag your business, but you’ll also want to tag a variety of other locations too. A few valuable options are to tag the county, your city, or even communities nearby.Pro Tip: Verify that your business is an option on Facebook and Instagram for people to “check in.”
2. PUBLICIZE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
  Let customers know your business is on social media when they’re in the store and in any communications you send digitally or by mail. Consider putting a small sign by the checkout counter, or adding social media logos to tabletop displays, receipts, menus, etc. You can add a little social media icon pretty much anywhere.
  
  Pro Tip: Build your audience by offering discounts to people who Like your Page or “check in” on social. Bonus points for creating a hashtag to use when they share photos about your product or brand.
3. USE REGIONAL HASHTAGS
  With a little research, you can identify a hefty list of regional hashtags. Find out which ones to use by following the tactic I share in this blog post, How to Find Powerful Hashtags for Social Media.Pro Tip: Check local publications’ accounts to see if they have any branded hashtags that they share photos from. A feature from an established account can get a lot of new eyeballs to your local social media account!
4. ENGAGE AS YOUR BUSINESS PROFILE
  Comment and interact with other local social media accounts as your Page or business profile to increase your visibility. Be smart with your time and think about your buyer personas when identifying accounts to interact with.Ask yourself what other accounts your buyer is likely to follow? If I were marketing Reiki services, I would engage with posts from yoga studios, yoga teachers, therapists, and other healers that do not offer Reiki. Note that these are not competing businesses.
  
  Pro Tip: You can now join and interact with Facebook Groups as a Page. Talk about generating exposure in the right places!
5. CONNECT WITH OTHER LOCAL BUSINESSES
  Connect with and tag other local businesses in your content, when relevant. Search out your local chamber of commerce, visitor accounts for your city or county, and other companies in your area.It’s not a bad idea to follow accounts in your line of business either. It creates a sense of community and opens up a line of communication if you ever need support. Personally, I follow many other writers on social media.
  
  Pro Tip: Partner up with non-competing businesses in your industry and hold a contest. Sharing each others’ social reach is mutually beneficial for brand awareness.
6. SHARE PHOTOS OF RECOGNIZABLE LANDMARKS
  Take photos with local landmarks to share on your account. Be careful about using other people’s images. Even if you tag them, you still could commit copyright infringement.
  
  View this post on Instagram
  
  A post shared by Meaghan Alvarado (@justmeaghan) on Jan 1, 2019 at 2:04pm PST
  
  Pro Tip: Incorporate your business into the photographs! If you sell a product, add it to the frame. If you’re a solopreneur, get someone to take a photo of you at a place easily recognizable by locals.
7. APPEAL TO A LOCAL AUDIENCE
  Tying back to number six, create shareable content that a local audience will find relatable. You could do this by sharing local references or jokes, or celebrating fun social media holidays.Pro Tip: Identify a list of social media holidays that would interest locals and create posts around them. There’s a social media holiday for just about everything now, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a few that tie into your locale AND your business. This social media holiday calendar from HubSpot is a great resource.
8. ADVERTISE
  Unless you find a way to go viral or have a lot of time to grow your audience, you’ll need to spend a little money. The social media marketing world is pay to play now, but it offers a lot of valuable targeting options. Use geo-targeting to narrow down the people who will see your ads or boosted posts by locations, job positions, and interests.
  
  Pro Tip: If you’re boosting posts on Facebook, use the Ads Manager to create a boosted post ad instead. You’ll have more targeting options and can even create a dark or unpublished post.
9. PARTNER WITH LOCAL INFLUENCERS
  Influencers can help expand your brand’s reach with the right viewers. Get them excited to share about your business by creating a mutually beneficial relationship. Prepare for an influx of new views by creating a discount code or freebie for new customers that the influencer can share. You’ll also be able to see how well the partnership works with a trackable code or coupon.
  
  Pro Tip: Plan an influencer event around a product launch or simply to create a lot of traction at once. Don’t forget an event hashtag!
10. CREATE VIDEOS
  Create videos and use location keywords in your description, tags, and titles on YouTube. Three types of videos you can share in practically any business are how-to’s, testimonials, or product explainers.Pro Tip: Edit the closed captioning for the video to make it more accessible to viewers watching without sound.
Is Facebook part of your local social media marketing strategy? Even if organic views are down, I still recommend having a Facebook presence. Social proof is a significant decision-making factor for consumers. A Page with your information and recent posts helps build credibility.

Are you feeling overwhelmed marketing your business on social media? Set up a free 20-minute exploratory call to find out how I can help with training, set up, or managing your accounts for you.

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Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Tips
Recommended Social Media Management Tools from a Seasoned Social Media Manager
- by Meaghan
Nearly half of small businesses are spending about six hours a week on social media. That’s almost a whole day of business! Social media management tools can help to make you more productive and effective during the time spent on social media.

Below is a comprehensive list of the tools I have worked with or am currently using to schedule content for myself and my clients. Many are accessible on mobile, and some are accessible on both mobile and desktop. Take it from a pro – it’s always nice to have your social media management tools right on your phone for easy access on the go!

Top Social Media Management Tools to Make Your Content Creation Tasks Easier

Social Media Management Platforms

Deciding on a social media management platform is like picking what type of ice cream you want at the local creamery. They’re all generally the same (frozen milk and sugar), but with slightly different ingredients based on your preferences.

[bctt tweet=”Deciding on a #socialmedia management platform is like picking what type of ice cream ? you want at the local creamery. It’s hard!” username=”meaghanmae”]

Hootsuite – With the free option of Hootsuite you can connect three social media accounts and schedule up to 30 messages. If you’re scheduling posts once a week or more frequently the free one may be enough, otherwise they have a paid plan that can handle more.

HubSpot – HubSpot is excellent for larger companies looking for a full-blown CRM (customer relationship management) system. You can do social listening, schedule content, and analyze your efforts based on campaigns within the platform.

Planoly– I recently started to use this, and I’m so glad I did! The drag and drop feature and grid view make it incredibly simple to plan your Instagram content. It even lets you know how many hashtags you have space left for with the Instagram mandated maximum of 30.

Buffer – If you’re a fan of drag and drop, this is the social media manager for you. At the time of this blog post, it’s one of the few platforms that offer drag and drop to reschedule content.

CoSchedule – Businesses with an active blog will like CoSchedule. It integrates with WordPress, and you can see social messages and blog posts in a single calendar for easier planning. Scheduling additional social messages for each blog is convenient too with your related images readily available.

Image Creators/Editors

Whether you’re creating the perfect Instagram post, the featured image for your next blog post, or thumbnail for your upcoming viral video, you’ll likely want a tool – especially if you’re going to add any text.

Canva – I wrote in-depth about Canva and how to use it in 2016. It’s one of my top two tools I recommend to clients if they want to DIY their social media and blog/website images.

izkiz Cam – This is my favorite Instagram image editor. Created by a popular Instagrammer with nearly 3 million followers, this app is $1.99. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something to make your photos brighter and more vibrant.

Analysis/Maintenance Tools

A big part of your social media marketing strategy should include analyzing your content to identify what works and what doesn’t. Accurately measuring your results from social will help you to generate top-performing posts as you move forward. Don’t guesstimate like this guy.

Most social media management platforms and social networks include analysis features within them, but if you’re looking for something more check out this list.

Google Analytics – Get an overall look at which social media platforms are performing best in bringing visitors back to your website with Google Analytics. You’ll also be able to see which formats are resonating the most with each social networks’ users.

InsTrack – Many Instagram users’ “strategy” to get followers is to follow and then unfollow as soon as the other account reciprocates. How this is still happening is beyond me! It’s incredibly disingenuine and a waste of time. To whittle these people out of your account, you can download InsTrack or a similar app to your smartphone that identifies who has unfollowed you.

ManageFlitter – The same follow and unfollow tactic from Instagram happens on Twitter too. Clean up who you’re following with ManageFlitter.

Hashtagify – Track hashtag popularity and find new ones using hashtagify.me.

Google Sheets – Google Sheets can’t do any analysis for you (unless you’re kind of an Excel wizard), but it’s a convenient way to track your social media engagement and to plan future content.

Employee Advocacy Platforms

Enterprise companies looking to grow their brand’s reach online can mobilize their employees to share content. As Forbes reported, “brand messages shared by employees on social media earn 561 percent more reach than the same messages shared by the brand’s social media channels.”

Executing an effective employee advocacy program necessitates a software that is simple to use for employees. The process of sharing your content needs to be as easy as possible. These are two of the tools I’ve used in the past – both as a user and in managing the platform.

GaggleAMP – In addition to engaging your employees in sharing, GaggleAMP makes it easy to include your other brand advocates (possibly your customers) in sharing useful content.
Everyone Social – The user has the option to create their own streams of content in Everyone Social. Similar to the feeds your business creates on company news, or other industry related content that your buyers will find helpful, they can add publications or hashtags that populate relevant content.

[bctt tweet=”Not sure which tools you should be using to help with #socialmedia #marketing? Check out this list! ” username=”meaghanmae”]

Where to Find OPC

Your social media plan should include a mix of (OPC) other peoples content and your own. Many social media managers, myself included, recommend an 80 to 20 ratio. 80 percent being OPC and 20 percent being content from your website or other online channels. Here’s a list of the places you can look to find relevant content to share with your audience:
1. BuzzSumo
2. Google Advanced Search
3. Anders Pink
4. Feedly
5. Relevant, Non-competing Industry Magazines and Blogs
Understand that these are just the tools that I use. There may be better options out there; new apps are coming out all the time. Agorapulse and Edgar, for example, are two commonly recommended paid tools I hear from my peers.

So what’s your flavor? Are there any tools I missed that you recommend to others? Are you going to try any of these out? Let me know in the comments below.

Reach out to me for a free 20-minute exploration call if you’re still struggling to get a grasp on managing your social media. I offer management services and training to help you grow brand visibility using social media.

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Blog, Social Media Tips
How Website Load Time on Mobile Affects Your Facebook Page’s Reach
- by Meaghan
Earlier this week Facebook announced that they’ve once again changed the algorithm delineating which content to show in users’ News Feeds. Content shared from websites with slow load times on mobile will decrease in views over the coming months.

“During the coming months we’re making an update to News Feed to show people more stories that will load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that might take longer to load, so they can spend more time reading the stories they find relevant.”

While this should fire you up to check on your own site’s load time, don’t forget about the OPC (Other People’s Content) that you’re sharing. If you share a lot of OPC from a slow moving website, your Page’s overall reach will begin to lessen.

Facebook went on to say that the user’s “current network connection” will also be considered. If the user has a slower network connection, and the web page URL you’re sharing has a long load time, it will appear lower in their News Feed. Obviously, you don’t have control over their network connection, so the focus is on the time it takes your website to load that page on mobile.

Testing and Improving Your Pages’ Loading Times

The first thing you’ll need to do is check mobile load time. Facebook provided a list of Best Practices to Improve Mobile Site Performance that included a few options for evaluating current load time. Below is an example of the information you’ll receive on PageSpeed. This tool was easy to use and very self-explanatory. It even provides suggestions on how to optimize your page further.

I also tried a few of the other tools on Facebook’s list. Instead of an overall grade, many gave me specific load times and were honestly overwhelming with the amount of data provided. Those tools are more for a developer, while the data from PageSpeed offered suggestions I could follow through on myself with a little bit of digging.

As a site owner, this may feel frustrating, but looking at it from a user perspective this algorithm change makes sense. Improving your website for a better mobile experience is necessary in today’s world, especially if you want to reach your audience on Facebook. According to Venture Beat, 56.5% of users only log in to Facebook from mobile. Another eye-opening data point – there are over 1.74 billion mobile monthly active users on Facebook. If you don’t speed up your pages load time over the next few months be prepared to see your Facebook referral traffic fall.

If you don’t improve your loading time over the next few months, be prepared to see your Facebook referral traffic drop. Now more than ever before is the time to consider the user experience of your website.

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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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Marketing, Social Media Tips
How to Find Powerful Hashtags for Social Media
- by Meaghan
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had two yoga teachers ask me about how to use hashtags on social media. Technology is often not high on the priority list for many yogis, and I’m gathering that very few in our industry know how to attract new students or customers by properly utilizing hashtags.

If you grew up with social media this may not apply to you, but you still may learn a new way to find powerful hashtags that can help to get your brand noticed. Skip down to the section on Finding Hashtags if you already know how to use them.

Hashtag Basics (or #basics)

Hashtags help you to get noticed. If you click on a hashtag on Twitter, it jumps you to a stream of every tweet with that hashtag. Same goes for Instagram and Facebook. Someone that is interested in yoga is likely to scroll through photos/posts with #yoga. If you’re using #yoga too, they’ll see your image.

Try to use only two per tweet, maybe three max. You should be using them in EVERY tweet you post.

On Instagram put your hashtags in a comment below your caption. You can use up to 30 on Instagram.

For Facebook, a lot of people don’t use them. I’ve even had some people ask me why I was using them there and almost get defensive like I wasn’t following the “Facebook rules.” But, these were individuals who don’t work on digital so, poo on them! If you do use some in your Facebook posts, three is a good number. Test it out and see how your audience takes to it.

LinkedIn is another place where many users aren’t used to seeing hashtags, but you should still be adding them to your posts. The hashtags on LinkedIn help to categorize posts and allow new readers to find your content.

Finding Hashtags

You’ll need to find hashtags that are relevant to what you’re sharing. So if your post is about writing a book use tags like #amwriting #fridayreads #amreading, etc. You can find new ones to use by looking through the streams of others using these hashtags. Click a photo in the hashtag stream you’re viewing and see what other tags that user listed.

If you are targeting a geographical area, use relevant hashtags to your region, i.e. #StAugustine #JaxBeach #Jax. Again, if you look at other people’s posts, you can find new hashtags to use on yours.

Here’s a trick to finding new hashtags on Instagram:
Go to the search section on Instagram and click the Tags tab.
Type in the hashtag you want to find more about (using yoga in my example). You can see from this screenshot a list of other relevant hashtags.
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Click one of the tags and then read the Related hashtags at the top of the page, you can scroll to the right for more. This can be a rabbit hole and lead you to find tons of new relevant tags.
>
Hashtag research will lead you to new accounts you may want to take notes from and follow. Reviewing what works for others in your industry is smart. Check out what are other yogis are using that appears to be gaining traction for them.

Another way is to start writing a word and see what tags auto-populate.

When looking for hashtags to use on Twitter, I often consult Hashtagify. It provides you with a popularity rating of a particular hashtag and gives a web of relevant hashtags. Again, this can be a rabbit hole and can lead to an overwhelming amount of results. I use Hashtagify weekly to find new hashtags to use on social media.

Finding hashtags is something you want to revisit regularly. New ones are popping up constantly, and you’ll want to test and reevaluate the ones you are using every so often.

Do you have any other ideas about how to find new hashtags?
Let me know in the comments below!

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