Helpful advice on how to grow your business using social media marketing. Covering planning, defining your audience, creating content and some useful time hacks and time saving tips.
6. SO WHAT?
“Well, think about how expensive it is to advertise on
tv…..”
“Then… look at how much time people spend on social
media compared to tv”
#NOBRAINER
7. SOME REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT
1. IT’S A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD AND GIVES COMPANIES OF ALL
SIZES EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
2. IT’S A CHANCE TO ENGAGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS IN THEIR
DAY TO DAY LIVES
3. YOU CAN STAND OUT AS A THOUGHT LEADER BY SHARING YOUR
AMAZING KNOWLEDGE
4. YOU CAN GAIN A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OVER THE
BUSINESSES THAT AREN’T DOING IT.
5. A VERY COST EFFECTIVE METHOD OF PROMOTING YOUR
BUSINESS COMPARED TO OTHER ADVERTISING MEDIUMS
10. “First think about your key objectives, what do you want to
achieve from your social media activity?”
ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS?
INCREASE WEBSITE TRAFFIC?
IMPROVE ENGAGEMENT?
GROW YOUR FOLLOWING?
11. THINK BIG
ACT SMALL
MOVE Q U I C K
“Then, set goals according to your objectives.”
“BSQ goal setting is a quick and simple goal setting method”
12. “Here’s a simple example of BSQ goal setting.”
“Let’s say you want to increase social media sales…”
THINK BIG ACT SMALL MOVE QUICK
Increase sales from
social media to 15%
of total revenue in 8
months
Develop social media strategy By October
Create and populate content plan By November
Start to roll out new content plan By December
Set up blog By December
Begin engaging with influencers and followers By January
Launch January offers By January
Create social media adverts By February
Review & revise content plan based on results By February
Work with influencers to increase outreach By May
14. “All of your social media activity should be created with
your target audience in mind. Here’s some tactics you can
employ to define that audience and find them.”
PERSONA CREATION
Age, gender, goals, interests & challenges
RESEARCH & LISTENING
Search social networks, keywords
USE LOCAL HASHTAGS
#Wiltshire #Chippenham #Community
17. • Biggest
audience
• Grow brand
awareness
• Cost-effective
& targeted ad
platform
• Image-based
• Highly engaged
audience
• Instagram stories
can increase
engagement further
• If you want to
increase B2B
leads LinkedIn is
the obvious
choice
• Huge pool of people
• Managing customer
service
• Good for promoting
special offers
“Think about which social media platform your audience
uses. Pick 1 or 2 and do them really well rather than
diluting your message too much remember CONSISTENCY IS
KEY!”
19. Authority
Area
(Your area of expertise)
Customer
Needs
(Why do customers buy your
product / service)
“According to Joe Pulizzi, author of Content inc. the sweet spot of
content production is the combination of…………..”
20. BLOG
“If you don’t have a blog, create one on your
website. This is where you will host all your
brilliant content!”
“Marketers who prioritise blogging are 13x more likely to
achieve a positive ROI on their efforts”
Source: [state of inbound]
22. “Don’t spam your audience with promotional posts, follow
the 80/20 rule, after all no-one likes being sold to!”
80% of content
informs, educates and entertains
20% of content
Promotes your business
23. “We all lead busy lives and can’t spend 99% of our time creating
content. Think about these content time hacks.”
RE-POST YOUR OWN CONTENT
RE-PURPOSE EXISTING CONTENT
SHARE AND LIKE OTHERS CONTENT
SHARE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS
24. “How often should you post? This is the minimum we would
recommend”
BLOG 1-4 X POSTS A WEEK
TWITTER 3 X PER DAY
FACEBOOK 2 X PER DAY
LINKEDIN 1 X PER DAY
INSTAGRAM 1 X PER DAY
26. “Whilst you will achieve great results through posting
organically. Advertising on social media can be really
effective for the following reasons.”
HIGHLY TARGETED
COST EFFECTIVE RELATIVE TO OTHER ADVERTISING
REACH AUDIENCE BEYOND YOUR NETWORK
BOOST PARTICULAR POST OR CAMPAIGN
28. “Consider using these hacks on all of your posts to
maximise reach and increase engagement”
USE # TO REACH A WIDER AUDIENCE
USE @ TO ENGAGE WITH USERS
USE EMOJI’S FOR PERSONALITY
USE IMAGES TO BE MORE ENGAGING
29.
30. “These are just a couple of useful tools to save you
time………..there’s hundreds out there”
32. FOLLOWERS: THINK QUALITY NOT QUANTITY
ENGAGEMENT: LIKES, SHARES, MENTIONS
ENQUIRIES: ACTUAL CUSTOMERS
“There’s no point in creating all this marvellous content
unless you are measuring its success. Here’s some
different metrics to consider depending on your
objectives.”
33. NEED SOME HELP?
GIVE US A MEOW
C U R I O U S C A T D I G I T A L
meow@curiouscatdigital.co.uk
www.curiouscatdigital.co.uk
0330 3301947
35. TRUSTED BY
SOME OF THE
UK’S BEST
KNOWN
BRANDS
“Savills engaged Claire from Curious Cat Digital as
an email marketing consultant. Claire helped us to
move from one email platform to another, train
internal colleagues on the new platform and made
recommendations about future email marketing
strategy. Claire delivered everything that was asked
of her and more. I would have no hesitation in
recommending her.”
Graham Smith, Online Marketing Manager, Savills
C U R I O U S C A T D I G I T A L
36. OUR SERVICES
C U R I O U S C A T D I G I T A L
a f u l l d i g i t a l m a r k e t i n g s e r v i c e o f f e r i n g
D I G I TA L M A R K E T I N G
S T R AT E G Y
PAY- P E R -
C L I C K ( P P C )
S E A R C H E N G I N E
O P T I M I S AT I O N ( S E O )
B 2 B L E A D
G E N E R AT I O N
C O N T E N T
M A R K E T I I N G
A F F I L I AT E
M A R K E T I N G
S O C I A L M E D I A
S T R AT E G Y
E M A I L
M A R K E T I N G
C O P Y W R I T I N G
37. EXPERIEN
CE FIRST
Our clients are only served by
our team with 10+ years
experience in digital
marketing and B2B sales
CURIOUS
BY NAME…
We love getting out and
seeing our clients, we’re
always curious about their
business
WE’LL CALL
YOU
We proactively keep our
clients up to date with the
latest industry changes giving
them (and us) the competitive
advantage
RESULTS
DRIVEN
We’re commercially focused,
aligning ourselves with our
clients KPI’s and goals
NIMBLE
Our model allows us to scale
our business according to
projects and maintain a low
cost base
DISTRIBUTE
D TEAM
Our team work remotely
giving us access to a global
talent pool and giving them
freedom to manage their own
time
WHY WE’RE DIFFERENT
C U R I O U S C A T D I G I T A L
38. THANKS FOR READING
C U R I O U S C A T D I G I T A L
meow@curiouscatdigital.co.uk
www.curiouscatdigital.co.uk
0330 3301947
Editor's Notes
My name’s Paul and this is Claire, we’re from Curious Cat Digital and are here to talk to you about how you can grow your business using social media.
Questions:
1. Can I have a show of hands if your company has a social media account?
2. Keep your hands up if it posts once a day or more?
3. Keep your hands up if you have a documented social media strategy?
So… Social Media…. Why do we bother
Well it might surprise some of you just how long we spend on different Social Media platforms in a lifetime
As you can see we spend the longest on YouTube, video content is the most engaging particularly in the younger generation
Overall though we spend 5 years and 4 months on average in our lifetime,
How does that compare to our other daily activities?
Interestingly we spend nearly 4 times more time socialising on social media than we do socialising in person.
Think about how much brands spend advertising on TV when having a presence on social media is free. Yet there’s very little difference in time people spend on the two activities, what a great opportunity!
And lets look at what else could we do in the same time we spend on social media?
That’s pretty amazing isn’t it?
Ultimately, the point is social media has become and will remain a huge part of our daily lives.
If you’re potential customers are spending such a huge amount of time on social media then this is a great place for your business to be visible.
So… We know we people spend a lot of time on social media
But what are the benefits to your business of being active on social media?
Everyone is given the same opportunity to get their voice heard, it doesn’t matter how big your company is - social media does not discriminate
If your customers are spending so much time here, it’s a great place for you to speak with them
You can stand out as an authority on a subject matter
If your competitors aren’t doing it as well as you, you’ll have an advantage!
As I mentioned before, you can be visible to potential customers at a much lower cost than other mediums.
So now Claire’s going to talk about the fundamentals of any social media strategy
So we can see it’s important but how can you make the most of this opportunity, where so you start?
Being active on social channels is not just about mindlessly posting content.
You need a well thought out plan and a consistent approach. The brands that commit to a strategic approach are ultimately the most successful.
So what sort of goals might you set in relation to social media?
At any point in time, your business may have one or more of the above core objectives.
The key thing is turning these objectives into specific goals you can move towards.
A really simple and quick approach to goal setting uses the BSQ framework.
Think Big – What would be a major accomplishment?
Act Small – Which steps would we need to take in order to achieve this goal?
Move Quick – What timeframe would work to achieve each of these steps?
[Organisational Psychologist Van Rooy]
So you can see how quick and easy this framework is to implement, but just having these actions in place will keep things on track and give you an overall goal to aim for.
[Organisational Psychologist Van Rooy]
Once we’ve established what we’re looking to achieve we want to think about our audience.
How can you attract a following of your potential customers?
Personas are fictional characters used to represent your different customers. Creating personas will help you understand your customers’ behaviours and needs.
Conducting research will help you understand the conversations happening around your industry. You can do this within each platform or using tools like SocialMention.
Using local hashtags will help get your message in front of your local community to increase your audience and engagement.
A good starting point is to think about 3 different customers your business has.
Create personas for them based on who they are and their age, gender, goals, interests and challenges.
Next we need to think about the most appropriate social media platform for our business.
If you have limited resource, which many SMEs do, “Pick one or two and do it really well”.
So how do you decide which platforms are most appropriate for your business?
Facebook – is still the number one network in terms of total number of active users. There are now 50 million small businesses with a Facebook presence.
Instagram – is perfect for creative businesses. Audience engagement on Instagram is higher than Facebook and Twitter.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the obvious choice if you are a B2B business looking to raise your profile and get more leads.
Twitter – like FB has a huge number of users. It’s a great platform for sharing timely content like news, offers and promotions. And it’s also a great way of managing customer service.
On all of these platforms, you can strengthen your connection with your local community through using location hashtags and following and supporting other local businesses.
Now you know what you’re hoping to achieve, who you’re targeting and where, you now need to think about your content.
Area of Authority – what is does your business do? In what field are you the experts?
Customer Needs – What makes customers by your products or what are your customers biggest challenges?
If you’re a B2C business like restaurant it will be your food, so aspirational pictures of your food could be a good starting point
If you’re an accountancy firm it will be your expertise, so guides on tax or calculating VAT would be valuable to your audience.
Where to start – a simple company brainstorm on all the common questions your customers ask you.
Each question could be a great topic for an article.
So you’ve got a load of great articles but where should you post them?
It is essential to host a blog on your website:
When you produce articles they should be posted on your blog first of all and then shared on social media.
When people click on your social media link they will be taken back to your website which is where you can convert them into customers.
This will increase you company visibility on search engines as it’s fresh content which Google likes
Think about the formats you’ll use according to your audience.
You might want to vary your format to test what gets the best engagement.
If you have a technical or analytical audience you might find whitepapers and reports are best.
If you have a younger audience entertaining content like photo’s videos and infographics might be more appealing.
Your probably wondering how you will have time to create all of this content?
As part of your strategy you should look to have a mix of valuable content and promotional content.
The 80:20 rule is a good way to divide up your content with 80% being informative valuable or entertaining content an 20% directly promoting your business.
If there is too much promotional content you will lose the interest of your audience as no one likes being sold to.
We always recommend having a steady stream of new content but don’t have to create everything from scratch.
Your most popular pieces of content can be re-posted on a regular basis
You’ve probably already created content for presentations and training that can be re-purposed into informative articles
It’s also good to engage with other social media influencers by sharing or liking their content.
Keep an eye out for industry news that you can share on your social media channels that is relevant to your audience
Whatever you do, it’s vital to be consistent
In terms of how often you should be posting, aim for these frequencies to ensure your audience continues to grow. Most importantly stay consistent and choose a frequency that you can stick to.
Whilst posting consistently high quality content will grow your following, you should also consider where appropriate the opportunity to advertise.
Each platform has the ability to pay to either advertise of promote posts to a wider audience beyond your network
The advantage of the adverts is that they can be targeted directly at your created personas
The fact that they are so targeted also makes them cost effective as they will only appear in people’s feeds who are likely to have an interest in your product or service.
We’ve got a few tips and tricks to share with you to help when producing and promoting your content.
Here are some tops hacks for your social your posts…
Hashtags make your content discoverable to people outside of your existing network – this is a great way to gain new followers.
When you tag other users in your content, they’ll be notified. This form of engagement with others can lead to them returning the favour – another way of reaching a new, relevant audience.
Emojis, when used well, are a great way of getting across your personality – humanising the brand and making sure your audience know real people are behind your social media efforts.
Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 x more engagement than those without - so consider using images wherever possible.
Here’s a nice example of where all of the above hacks have been incorporated to create a professional-looking and well-optimised post.
Buffer is a post scheduling tool – meaning you don’t have to remember to post and then panic when you’ve forgotten. You can line up your posts once a week - a much more efficient use of time.
Feedly is a resource for finding popular content to share. Find the best stories on the web for your chosen topics and share with your audience – a great content curation tool.
Hashtagify.me helps you find and select the most popular hashtags to use in your posts.
Look beyond number of followers
Here’s some different KPI’s too look at
Ultimately you want to find a way to track if new customers are coming via social media
My name’s Paul and this is Claire, we’re from Curious Cat Digital and are here to talk to you about how you can grow your business using social media.
Questions:
1. Can I have a show of hands if your company has a social media account?
2. Keep your hands up if it posts once a day or more?
3. Keep your hands up if you have a documented social media strategy?
My name’s Paul and this is Claire, we’re from Curious Cat Digital and are here to talk to you about how you can grow your business using social media.
Questions:
1. Can I have a show of hands if your company has a social media account?
2. Keep your hands up if it posts once a day or more?
3. Keep your hands up if you have a documented social media strategy?
