Inactive social media accounts can harm your online reputation

Having an inactive social media account sends the message to your customers that you are either no longer in business or just don't care about your online reputation.  

Typically, problems occur when managers of a company place their social media marketing responsibilities in the hands of their own employees, who usually have little or no experience in this type of work.  Sometimes, employees even will take it upon themselves to create accounts without asking, operating without management's permission or knowledge.  This can hurt reputation, as there is no consistency in the message or proof reading from the eyes of those in charge. 

This is further compounded when companies allow in-house employees to create and keep the pass codes to social media accounts.  If that employee quits, is let go, or walks off the job, he/she take the social media accounts with them.      

When socially active customers search your business on social media sides and come upon a page that is inactive or littered with unhappy posts from customers, they get the wrong impression of your business (and it's usually not a positive one).

Usually, this is a turn-off for customers, as many use internet reviews they find on social media sites as an aid in their decision-making process.  These customers start searching other companies immediately, meaning you have already lost the opportunity to capture them.  The old adage, "you only have one opportunity to make a first impression" rings especially true today thanks to instant exposure and easy access of information in the social media world.    

An easy way to avoid all these pitfalls is by hiring a professional third party to control your social media accounts, passwords and security settings, establishing a stronger and more secured, positive online reputation. 

Basically the same rule of thumb applies when creating new accounts for your business, as companies need to be careful not to duplicate pages.  More than one page associated to your specific business, store, brand, or product confuses and frustrates customers, making them jump through unnecessary hoops to access the information you want to provide.  Most companies with the problem of duplicate pages have many other of the social media issues outlined above, making it a sure sign that a company is disinterested in this form of marketing; this isolates their business and keeps them detached from the modern world that exists in large numbers over the internet on a daily basis.

It truly is critical for companies to have senior management or a contracted third party keeping a close eye on your social sites so you don't get into this situation.  The amount of work that is necessary to do this frequently surprises businesses, as year-round consistency is extremely difficult to achieve in addition to other responsibilities of employees.  A third party allows a company to allocate all this work to an individual at an affordable price, with a contracted guarantee that information will be sent out and posted on all platforms with uniform consistency, creativity, and attention to detail.  This protects the company's image, brand, and reputation while also further securing the pages themselves from tampering, spamming, or anything else that can send the wrong idea to customers.

Facebook Messenger introduced new fun video features.

Facebook Messenger introduced new fun video features.

Until now, video chatting on Messenger has been pretty bare-bones. Recently, Facebook added several features to amp up the fun factor.

These new tools allow you to add animated reactions, filters, masks, and effects to video chats, and take screenshots of your chats.

Here are a few pro-tips for using the new video chatting features:

Emojis — When you add emojis to animate on your video screen, watch closely! The effects change depending on whether your face is on or off screen.

Filters — Not sure if you look good? Test the filter before letting others see it.

Masks — Some of the masks have hidden effects when you move. Try opening your mouth with the rabbit mask…

For Messenger video chat users, the new emojis, masks, and filters should inspire some laughs from friends and family. For business, they will make your interaction way more personal. Perfect for connecting to millennials, it needs to be used with care with the rest of your audience.

Social Media Marketing Trends for Business

Let's discuss what on the horizon for social media marketing

Tablets Will Grow In Use vs Print

Tablets became widely known when Apple unveiled them in 2010. However, ipadforsocialmediatoday several companies have introduced cheaper tablets which are replacing print in every home.  A lot of popular publishing houses have been switching to tablets from the usual print. Print media is diminishing rapidly. The Amazon’s Kindle Fire, a low-cost tablet has been taken over a significant segment of the print market.

Visualization More Important Than Ever

For all the exciting and informative things founds online, whether it is a couple of kittens playing, a baby laughing, or a top commercial featuring a popular model, there is always an element of video. With a video, people tend to accept and attach on a much deeper level due to the usage of visually-rich and interactive elements depicting a proper message or story. And as a consequence, audience is tempted to take considerable action in terms of likes, sharing, etc.

With time, brands have been able to capitalize on the introduction of highly-engaging video features on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.

For this trend, we are going to focus on video aspect only since businesses are seizing the opportunity to differentiate their brand in the competitive industry.

Mobile users are tending to spend more time than ever with their smartphones, with the excitement to watch videos online being proportionate as well. It is clear from the following stats that online video is growing rapidly in popularity.

YouTube registers more 18 and above years-old audience during peak TV hours than any cable TV network.

Advertisers on prime time broadcasting TV could gain 56% more audience of 18 to 49 years-old through advertising on YouTube.

Plainly from statistics, it does not come as a surprise that Facebook recently revealed the count of 1.65 billion active users watching about 8 billion videos each day.

Consumers are more tempted from videos because of the deeper attachment they experience from the visual on-screen elements. Realizing the need, the trend of promoting high-quality video content is very much likely to soar high in future.

Master Micro-Moments

Mobile gadgets have proved to be a major influence in customer interaction and engagement with brands across the globe. But the surprising thing for most people is the concept of “micro-moments”, which has powered the shift to mobile phones. From long-term goals such as planning to purchase a home, or something as small as acquiring a quick grocery from the nearest store or even locating the ingredients of a dish from your phone, etc., countless of these micro-moments stimulate the impulse to reach out for our mobile phone.

As per Think with Google, micro-moments are highly critical and evaluative touchpoints where customers expect brands to cater their needs with reliable information, regardless of the time and location.

Whenever a customer feels the need to inquire about something, an astounding 96% of users reach for their smartphones to conduct the required research at that very instant. Only successful brands have the tendency to correctly anticipate and address the exact micro-moment needs by providing the right information at the right time to customer in need.

A useful, quick and one-touch access to the needed information becomes the basis of acquiring customer trust and building long-lasting relationships.

HASHTAGS FOR BUSINESS AND BRAND - Social Live

Why create your own hashtag for brand, product and use it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

Businesses can use hashtags for a variety of reasons.

If the hashtag is already in use by a community, it’s can be a great tool for networking, lead generation and more. But businesses may choose to create their hashtag for a number of reasons, including:

Encouraging event participants to live tweet
Hosting a Twitter chat
Hosting an online Q&A
To promote a product launch
To show support for a charity or cause
The list is as long as there are reasons for using Twitter itself.

Be sure that you understand what purpose your hashtag will serve before your create it.

4 steps to creating your own hashtag

Ready to jump in and create your own branded hashtag? It’s not overly complicated. Here’s how:

Brainstorm. You want this hashtag to represent your brand and the way you will be using it – but you also want it to be short and sweet.

Come up with a list of several potential hashtags that could be used based on your business name, event, etc.

Including the year works for hashtags that will be reused yearly (for annual events, for instance), and including “chat” somewhere in the hashtag is common for weekly or monthly Twitter chats.

Research. Next, check to see that your ideal hashtag isn’t already in use. Since you’re looking to create a community around your hashtag, you want to start fresh – you don’t want to encroach on another community’s space.

Use Twitter’s search to see if and when your hashtag has ever been used, and go down the list you created in the brainstorm until you find a suitable, quiet hashtag.

Promote. Your hashtag is going to be pretty quiet if no one knows about it! Tell your ideal community – your followers, your business connections – that the hashtag exists, and let them know how you will be using it. You can send an email blast, write a blog post, put up signage in your store… use whatever promotional tools are available to you to get the word out.

Monitor. Once people know about your hashtag, it’s time to use it!

Make sure you monitor the chatter, and chime in whenever it makes sense. If you’re hosting a weekly chat, monitor and use the hashtag during that hour or so each week. If it’s an event hashtag, be sure to monitor it in the days and hours leading up to the event, during the event itself, and post-event for photos and feedback.

  ‪#‎hastagtips‬ ‪#‎socialmedia‬ ‪#‎sociallive‬ ‪#‎sociallivellc‬ ‪#‎ferndalewa‬

Another Perspective on Instagram with more than 500 million user

Instagram has more than 500 million users, the social media platform that provides a great marketing tool for you to reach potential customers for your business. 

In order to improve your Instagram marketing, you need to increase your following on a steady and consistent basis. After all, the more people that come in contact with your brand and follow you on Instagram, the larger your audience is that you can potentially reach every time you post. 

Here are seven easy to implement Instagram marketing tips that will help you grow your brand.

Cross promote Instagram posts.

Want to easily add new Instagram followers that already love your brand? Post across all over your other social media profiles Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and invite them to follow your Instagram profile. They are already following you on social media, so they are obviously interested in what you offer, so give them another way to socially connect to your brand.

Don’t assume that your posts will reach everyone that’s connected to your brand on social media. Many people move away from certain social media platforms and some aren’t as active on some than they are on other networks. You want your followers to be connected to as many of your social profiles as possible to increase your reach per post.


Create an interactive hashtag.

Creating an interactive hashtag is a great way to create instant engagement -- just make sure you are using hashtags the correct way. A very simple strategy I have used for some of the larger brands I consult for is creating a hashtag that customers use to tag photos of them with the product that they just purchased. 

For example, creating a hashtag that your company can search for to re-post the pictures of your customers with your product will accomplish two things:

It will cause more of your followers to use the hashtag and post images of them with your product because they will want to be featured on your page
Every time someone posts using your hashtag they are exposing all of their followers to your company and products.

Show what you do in a creative way

Focus on the solution you provide, not the products you sell. On Instagram, it’s essential to add value to your customers and look pretty while you do it. Never underestimate the fact that your most important asset (and downfall) on this social media network is visual content.

If your business is service-oriented, focus on showcasing the process behind providing the service. Show your company culture, share your mission with the world, or simply share some tips and how-tos. It’s possible to upload photos, short videos and story lines.  

Try Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories have a slideshow format and are only live for 24-hours (though they can be saved to your device to be re-used later). This new feature is a direct competitor to Snapchat’s Stories and is now being heavily developed by Instagram. These are some of the benefits of using Instagram Stories for brands:

Stories are prominently displayed at the top of follower timelines just under the Instagram logo.
Can be used to capture behind-the-scenes content that doesn’t have to be as high in quality as regular posts.

Makes it easy to experiment with different content types: photo, short video, Boomerang (GIF-like image), video filmed backwards (Rewind) and live video.
Tagging other accounts, e.g. @instagram in Stories is ideal for collaborators and influencer marketing.

Fun additions like face filters, text and stickers help you edit images on-the-go.
Story search for hashtags and locations make them more discoverable.
All photos and videos you add will play in the sequence they were added and you can add as many as you like. Instagram Stories adverts became available to all businesses globally in March 2017. 

You can use these to target new audiences and add CTAs to your collages which can be especially useful for promotions. Check out Single Grain’s ultimate guide to running Instagram Stories Ads for a full step-by-step guide to creating your first one.

Note that Stories are only available on the mobile app and it’s possible to send Instagram Stories as a direct message (DM). We’re yet to see widespread use of sending Stories privately for businesses, unless you’ re planning to send tailored short videos to prospects.

Collaborate and @mention others

Instagram is one of the strongest social media channels for highlighting collaborators and sharing customer success stories. Even if you don’t officially partner with a non-profit organization, you can give to charity or do a fundraiser a couple of times a year. 

It’s all good as long as the cause aligns with your brand values and mission. Take into account that not everyone is monitoring hashtags on social media, so tagging an account is usually a better choice if you want to get noticed.

Another technique involves the use of ‘shout-outs’. An unpaid shout-out is when you partner with another brand that has roughly the same number of followers as you to promote each other to your audiences and you both benefit from increased exposure.

The paid shout-out is for those with a bigger budget as it’s essentially an influencer campaign. This usually involves paying a brand (or influencer) with a much larger following to promote your product or service. It’s a great way to gain a large number of new followers quickly, providing that you create a strong call to action and the influencer’s audience is genuine.

Good news for businesses with Pinterest announcing they are bringing back affiliate links to their site.

After a fifteen month absence from all affiliate links on Pinterest account's, they are back. 

Pinterest announced today that they have worked out all link, spam and poor user experiences from their page and board links.

Pinterest users reported ongoing issues with broken images, spam images and bad redirects were destroying the excitement on the site, so an executive decision was made to remove and cease support for affiliate redirects, links and trackers.

The decision to return to the use of affiliate links is based on the improved spam tracking technology that can help ensure that the affiliate experience does interfere from a Pinterest users experience.

Pinterest expects this to encourage businesses to again start using Pinterest as a location for services, products and brand identity as businesses will be able to link to other social media sites and share their messages.

Another objective of supporting affiliate Pins is to support the international users and encourage them to create boards and more content for Pinterest, which will also open the international markets to businesses that would not normally reach this audience.

The restoration of affiliate links on Pinterest is a plus for all users and Pinterest alone as more participation on the network will provide additional revenue sources to community members who have previously found a solid return on their time investment.

The more engagement, the more appealing the network is to just about everyone who comes into contact with it.