Let’s be honest, there are a myriad of tools floating around that can help you create some pretty amazing videos and graphics for your social media accounts. The caveat is that most are not free, and for a company or individual who is looking to create compelling videos and graphics without having to spend a lot of money doing so, this journey can be frustrating.
Google+ (also known as Google Plus), has always been the red-headed stepchild of social media. Google’s attempt to compete with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is finally calling it quits effective April 2019.
There has been a dramatic uptick in turmoil at Facebook in 2018 and the couple years previous, thanks to coordinated misinformation campaigns by foreign and domestic players alike, misuse of improperly collected information through Facebook’s third-party apps, and now the mass data breach that has affected over 50 million users.
You would think that Facebook accounts would be closing left and right, but that’s not the case.
The Internet has changed the way consumers behave and buy products. With this change has come a new type of consumer that is more educated and able to do vast amounts of research before making a purchasing decision. It has also brought about a consumer that spends a lot of time online, whether it is for personal or professional reasons. This gives marketers new opportunities to interact with their customer base and reach out to different audiences.
Social media sites are important places for companies to keep up with changing business trends, connect with other organizations, interact with and engage leads, and communicate with customers. They're also important for getting your brand and your humanity out there!
In the land of digital marketing, we come up with some pretty unique terms. Backlinks, black hat, heatmap, keyword stuffing, schema markup, and slug. These are all jargon, and if you're not in the marketing biz, you probably have no idea what they are referring too.
Facebook, like every other social media platform, is always evolving. Most recently (rolled out in summer 2017), they updated some key components in their news feed algorithm. If you’re one of the millions that noticed a recent change in your Facebook News Feed, you may have had the initial reaction I did, which was annoyance.
“I’ve seen all of these already… days ago, because they’re a WEEK old. Why am I seeing them again?”
Okay, I know that sounds petty when it’s written out, but isn’t that how social media has wired us now? We want to see the most recent news, not week-old news.
After doing more research, I realized that Facebook actually did something right.
It is no longer an option for businesses to ignore social media platforms. Each platform has a unique audience of users, and with each audience you may get different levels of engagement - so don't assume that failing to reach one audience means you'll fail to reach any audience on social. We use several social media platforms at Tribute Media. They are all used for different reasons and they all have their own culture while still maintaining our brand. The trick to using it successfully is to know who your target audience is and how they are using each platform.
Pinterest is a stand-alone visual social network built around engaging visual content. Users share images from the web by “pinning” them on to a series of virtual boards. These images then (when clicked on) lead to a web page away from Pinterest. That's where it becomes beneficial for your company. If you can catch a lead from Pinterest through an image, title, and short description - you've got the opportunity to direct them to your website.
Email marketing and social media may serve different purposes in your overall marketing strategy, but when it comes to lead generation, one comes out on top: Email marketing.
Both are beneficial and critical to any marketing campaign, but once you get a grip on the differences, you’ll get a better feel for how you should be utilizing email and social media in your campaigns to gain a higher ROI.
