Enhancing Consumer Trust Through Strategic Content Marketing
Yorkshire Mafia Social Media on Toast - Facebook & Blogging
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Social Media on
Toast:
Winning business
with Facebook
and Blogging
w: JonnyRoss.com e:jonny.ross@jonnyross.com tw: @jrconsultancy LinkedIn: /jonnyross
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Introductions
Jonny Ross
• Former optician
• Ran chain of opticians and ecommerce site
• Website, SEO, ecommerce
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Strategy/Aims/Objectives
• Do you simply want to raise awareness?
• What is the key message that you want to
send to your followers/potential followers?
• Are you looking to fundraise or gather
supporters?
• Do you want to inform followers about the
work you, as a charity or business for that
matter carry out and who it benefits?
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How to create an editorial calendar. It
sounds complex…but it isn’t!
• People think it needs
to be fancy and
detailed.
• Two advantages;
planning and
accountability.
• There are lots of ways
to create an editorial
calendar, but let’s
keep it simple.
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Step 1: Make a list of key dates for the year
• Product launches
• Events / trade
shows
• Marketing
campaigns
• Promotions
• Holidays
• Sporting events
• Key milestones
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Step 3: A comprehensive list of all your
fundraising events/campaigns.
• Do any of these fit in nicely with your roadmap so
far?
• Split them evenly throughout the year.
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Step 4: Open a Google
Spreadsheet
• Sole Trader or maybe 4 staff..?
• Use Google so it’s easy to share and update
• Everyone with permission can have access
• It’s a live spreadsheet
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Time to think of Blog Titles
•Use a number (7 Secrets to success)
•Teach me (How To Do..)
•Ask a question (Are you king of twitter?)
•Talk to me (use you and your)
•Just say no (Don’t buy this)
•Use celebs/brands and popular trends (Pizza Express is
the winner – Email Marketing)
•Be controversial
•Make an unusual association (How Lemons help your HR)
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And I can help you…
• Research your keywords
• Create and help write a blogs
• Train teams or individuals on
LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus
• Use LinkedIn for targeting
…. And of course, SEO/websites!
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Challenge me?
Does anyone want to challenge me, does anyone
think this is all a load of nonsense?
It’s time to ask questions!
•For Tips, Tricks and more free advice Subscribe
to my blog at JonnyRoss.com
•Carry on the conversation with me on twitter
@jrconsultancy
Notas do Editor
Who is on FB
Who is on Twitter?
Who uses lists in twitter?
Who is on LI?
Who is in any LI groups?
Who is sending email campaigns?
Who is blogging?
Who is on G+?
Introduction
So, for those of you who don’t know, I set up an ecommerce store back in 1999 selling sunglasses and for the first 6 years we were the biggest sunglasses e-tailor in the UK, based on volume and turnover, with a decent profit too.
In 2004 Google decided they didn’t like us, we suffered a Google penalty, now Google penalties are talked about and most people have heard about them, or certainly penguins and pandas, but back then no one knew what they where.
Overnight we went from top of Google for all our keywords to page 7 and 8!
Going through 2 SEO agencies over an 18-month period and neither of them could solve the problem, which resulted in us losing 40% of our turnover.
I then found a guy in New York who worked on a ridiculous hourly rate but within 2 weeks he solved the problem and got us back!
Cutting a long story short, I became passionate about SEO and decided to change my career into helping others understand it and avoid the pitfalls of Google.
So that’s why I’m here today, to aid you in creating a professional online personal brand that will hopefully enable you to begin networking and build relationships with potential employers.
The most important thing to remember when using social media is to be strategic.
Ensure that whatever you post or are seen to do on social media sites is relevant and is for a reason.
One way to do this is to set yourself key goals or objectives against a time scale so that they can be easily measured.
Also, constantly asking yourself questions is a good way to fully understand what it is you are wanting to achieve.
Examples given above indicate how they can quickly allow you to decide what direction your social media will move in, it is also a great way to start thinking about content, however this is something that we will cover further on in this section of the presentation.
Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms.
Originally used to socialise and network with friends and family but it is now being used by charities in order to raise awareness and expand their online profile.
Many charities have their own Facebook pages, just like you or I do.
However it is used in a multitude of ways to interact with followers and donators.
We have selected a few charities and campaigns who are using Facebook extremely effectively.
Dogs Trust is the largest dog welfare charity in the UK.
Along with advertising campaigns, they have taken to social media to further expand their profile and make even more people aware of the work they do.
First of all, their Facebook statistics speak volumes with regards to how efficient they are.
With 582,504 likes and a staggering 13,410 people talking about them it is clear to see that they are definitely doing something right.
First of all they have made a great use of the Facebook layout, ensuring their cover photo states exactly what the charity does and what they are working towards. The about box at the top of the page clearly states that they work to provide shelter for dogs and rehome them, with their strapline ‘We never put a healthy dog down’ shown twice in this small space. It is also extremely easy to donate with the ‘Donate Now’ badge also very easily visible.
All of this combined means that anyone who finds themselves on their page will instantly be aware of exactly what the charity does and how they can get involved.
Another key feature which contributes to the Dogs Trust success is their Facebook frequency.
As you can see from the screenshot above, they are constantly active, posting appeals and mini case studies – for example 6 year old Barnie from Canterbury.
Dogs Trust also use their Facebook page to appeal and advertise events that they are hosting.
With such a large following, this is an excellent idea!
If only a handful of their followers support events promoted on their Facebook page, it will still be a massive success and ensure that plenty of money and awareness is raised.
Another example of a charity which holds a great following on Facebook is Macmillan Cancer Support.
Earlier on in the year, Macmillan Cancer Support held a Q and A with its interns through their Facebook page.
This also lead them to advertise for new members of staff and volunteers.
This is a great example of how you can use Facebook to promote yourselves as a charity but also using the power of followers to appeal for employers and general support.
Macmillan Cancer Support also frequently keep an active presence on Facebook, similarly to Dogs Trust this seems to be the key to their success – active engagement.
Typical posts are most always more than once a day and typically include:
> thanking donators and supporters for raising money.
> promoting events, both those held locally and nationally
> hosting competitions in order to raise money
> relevant information taken from the news
> appealing to followers to share their stories to encourage support and pass on support
All of these examples were taken from a 3 day period, which demonstrates how they interact in many varied ways over a short space of time.
This screen demonstrates the varied ways in which Macmillan Cancer encourages interaction with its followers.
Constantly posting, asking questions and making it easy for followers to get involved are the best examples of ways in which charities can really utilise their social media profiles – not just Facebook– but in overall to create a strong online presence.
Both posts nearly reach 200 likes and this demonstrates how interaction with followers is crucial.
Posting things that they will want to read and get involved with.
Asda 100 likes etc…
A simple Facebook campaign by Diesel – bringing Facebook ‘likes’ into the real world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZmbBPym1k
Targeting customers – who uses Facebook?
57% women, 43% men
67% of users are over 35 years old – surprised?
High engagement – users spend average of 32 minutes on site each visit
The Walmart boss in Leeds, in the UK he says “we post at 2.55pm as this is when mums are in the school playground waiting to pick kids up from school – they use spare time to check their Facebook” we find its one of the best items to get engagement, in fact if we don’t get 100 likes in the first 60 seconds we ditch the post!
I can only wish for that volumne!!
One of my clients offers life coaching and NLP courses. She knows that some of her clients are into alterative medicines and spiritualism,
So we’ve looked at how we can interact with some of the Facebook groups based around this subject. This then allows her to better understand and engage with her clients and potential customers. As she spends time in these groups offering advice, people are much more willing to come to her for courses. She has used the pages to build trust – as trust is a really important part of her customers’ purchase decision.
Another example is another client of mine who has a target audience aged over 50, and more specifically, men who play golf. We are therefore currently looking at interacting with golf course Facebook pages and Twitter accounts with a view to creating a relationship with not only the course itself but also with its members. This hopefully will lead to my client being able to offer the golf course preferential rates to his customers through his website. It will also mean that his initial contact is not cold as a traditional first interaction may have been, as he has spent time interacting with the established trusted golf centres using their social media pages.
So you can see that social media is an excellent way of building a relationship with your customers and potential new customers online, without being intrusive, and in a way you can establish yourself as a trusted supplier, and someone with something useful to offer them.
Don’t worry about setting yourself up on every social media platform going: there’s no need. Just focus on the ones you know your customers will already be using to begin with and concentrate your energies there.
So lets establish what is classed as social media
How Corona Light created a huge buzz without a huge budget, by giving its Facebook fans the chance to appear on a New York billboard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utPtqdPjqwY
Who would have thought a soap product could have over 19 million likes and over 320,000 people engaging with the brand at any one time!
So just to be clear what is a blog?
a blog is the same as news or latest news I suppose it’s not called news because it gives the opportunity not just to write about the latest news, its an opportunity to talk about all the aspects of your products and services, to portray yourselves as thought leaders and to bring personality to your brand.
Blog is short for web-log: a post – or log – made online.
Blogs are a great way of engaging with customers and sharing information.
It’s a way to educate your audience all about your services and charity
It’s your charities latest news
An opportunity to show personality
To give away advice to your existing following
And to engage with potential followers
So we have seen some examples , but why should you blog?
It forces Creativity
It builds a community
Adds value to your site
It gives you content for your Social Media and Email Campaigns
Gets you to the top of Google
I believe blogs can increase your goals by helping to Overcome barriers
For me the Blog is the core of any social media or SEO campaign.
Blogs provide regular content to share through your other social media sites.
User-generated content, ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ are now being ranked more highly by search engines, so it pays to invest in social media and blogging.
Blogs provide
Status updates for Facebook
Tweets for Twitter- take a blog with the title “top 5 tips”, well all of a sudden you have created 5 tweets, all with links to the blog, don’t tweet them alll in one go, spread them out over the week/month. Stuck for tweets, go back to blogs from 6 months ago!
Updates for Linkedin personal and company profiles
Status for Google Plus
Email campaigns – do you get to start of the month and think, what are we going to put into our email campaign this month? if you have fab blogs, there is your content already written!)
They give content for your keywords to be found in Google, search engine optimisation, you will only be found if you mention the keyword, and the more times you mentionit the more relevant you are (don’t mention for sake, it must be relevant)
A blog should be an integral part of your marketing and comms strategy, but you need to set goals.
What are you marketing goals?
Need to encourage more volunteers, what could we write that would engage with potential volunteers?
Lets give them some information, lets become a resource and during the process, lets build trust with them and let them know what we as a charity could offer them.
So this is all great but how do we come up with content?
We need to feed ourselves
Subscribe to competitors
Subscribe to industry related news and professional bodies
Keep notes of questions customers ask you
Create Google alerts on niche topics ( this is a great tool simply Google Google alerts and try it out!)
Thing about all the products/services you offer
Keep a journal/voice recorder
Invite Guest blogs from customers
Write about your passions?
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I wanted to share some personal blog experiences with you to help you see how this can fit into your business.
One of my marketing goals is to appear high in Google, for this I need to build links with relevant websites, this blog was written on a topical subject about big data, everyone in the digital industry is currently talking about it.
I took time to really research what it was all about and throughout the research I formed my opinions from my own experiences and wrote a really informative blog
Danny Brown lives in Burlington, Ontario.
He is a multiple award-winning marketer and blogger – his blog is recognized as the #1 marketing blog in the world by HubSpot and voted one of Canada’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs coming in at the number 3 slot.
He has delivered results for some of the biggest organizations in technology, digital and consumer, including BlackBerry, British Telecom, Orange, Microsoft Canada, IBM, Ford Canada, FedEX, Scotiabank, Vodafone, Dell and LG Electronics.
He has spoken at numerous business conference and events, and is regularly quoted in publications and news media, including Marketing Magazine, Canadian Marketing Association, Toronto Star, Fast Company and City News Toronto on the topics of influence, social business, data-driven business intelligence and digital marketing.
So what happens, he comments on my blog!.......
If that wasn’t good enough
He tweets a link to my blog to 35,000 of his followers…
It got better…. He wrote another blog the next day and referenced my blog and linked back to it!
So not only did my blog get tweeted to 35k people from someone who is extremely influential, I got a well deserved link from a page rank 5, top domain authority blogger!
You can see the effect the tweet had on my traffic that day, nearly double the average traffic for a week day.
When I set up my business I knew that one of my key services would be to offer paid speaking.
Ive understood the power of blogging since 2005 and began bloggin myself in 2007.
I knew that blogging was always going to form the core marketing of Jonny Ross Consultancy.
It’s a weekly blog on all things digital, all related to my products and services I offer.
Its non saley and highly informative, and all blogs are NOT written for SEO, but have SEO in mind.
I talked about keywords in the last webinar and the need to work on not just 10 or 20 but hundreds.
I have a keyword list of around 1800 keywords. And I always try to see if I can use keywords when I am writing blogs, don’t get me wrong if they don’t feel right in a blog I don’t use them, but if I can I will, ultimately you will only be found for a particular keyword or phrase if its present on your website,.
I wrote on online vs offline marketing a couple of years ago,
I get a phone call out of the blue, its from a company that will remain namless! But lets just say they are a major player in a particular sector in the UK.
I’ve never gone online with this story before, its something we must all remember, the moment you say or write something online it is there forever!!
Anyway what they didn’t know is that I hadnbt been paid to speak before and more so I had never spoken on social media publically for more than 5 or 10 minnutes.
The call came and it went along the lines of….
Hi, we have just googled online vs offline marketing ( back then I was top for this phrase!!) and you came up top of Google.
They then, because I was at the top of Google , made some assumptions…..
They said, you have obsiously done a massive amount of reasearch on this topic, I said…. Errr yes pretending I had done more than I ad.
You obviously speak at many conferences on this topic…. Errm yes
Would you consider speaking at our annual conference in a few months time…. Errm it depends on how much you are willing to pay me!!
Anyway 4 months later, I spoke in front of hundreds of delegates and got amazing feedback and have not stopped working with many of the delegates and that particular sector since.
I think its quite a succes story and it really simply came from 1 blog post.
An editorial calendar will help you to plan ahead, link blogs to seasons and events, and ensure you have a good variety of blog topics to appeal to all your customers and showcase your whole product range.
If you have more than one blogger, it also helps you to know who is writing what and to plan submission and posting dates.
Make the calendar work for you. Yours might include things like: season; theme; products featured; keywords; target reader segment; date etc.
I tend to mention these and people think it needs to be fancy and detailed.
There are two main advantages, planning and accountability
There are loads of ways of creating one, but lets keep it simple!
So make a list of key dates for the year, think of your
Product launches
Events / trade shows
Marketing campaigns & Promotions
Holidays & Major Sporting events
Any Key milestones
Then simply add these to your road map, this is nothing more than an excel sheet with Jan – Dec along the top and the categories down the side.
So we can see valentines day in February for example.
Then think of all your fundraising events/campaigns, do any of these fit nicely together?
Is there a product that goes well with world tennis tournament?
What about one that fits nicely with Easter?
Would talking about fundraising service X go well with trade show Y in September?
Can you find ways to make your fundraising events/campaigns and seasonal events go together at all?
My suggestion is to use a Google spreadsheet, especially if there is more than one of you in the business, this helps share who is going to be writing the content, it gives accountability and it lets you have one document you can all refer to and edit at the same time.
It’s a live spreadsheet and it should have:
Who the author is?
What the title of the blog is going to be?
Any keywords that need to be used in the blog?
What will the call to action be? (Make it different each time)
Any notes?
And most importantly deadlines?
Once you have this, I suggest doing a 6 month or 12 month calendar, you don’t need to wait until February and think oh no what will I write about, instead if you get a free hour, write the valentines blog now, it will still be valentines day in February!
Of course leave space for topical / news worthy blogs, but I would suggest most blogs can be written well in advance.
Blacks solicitors is a lawyers in leeds, they are amazing on social media, tweeting all the time. The have some fabulous blog writers and amazing content, but one of the issues they had was they couldn’t get engagement with the blog.
I was very kindly asked to come and do a blogging workshop for some of the senior partners and lawyers and this was one of the slides I used for the workshop.
I am no expert in photoshop but for me this slide helps show some key elements that are required in a blog
Instantly you can see the entire blog feels more inviting.
I guess you are drawn to the images and the sharing, but also the sub heading and bullet points,
Let me remind you of the last slide
--------
As I said this helped me come up with some key elements for them
How should the blog look?
Beauty is everything
Ensure you use images to break up your content
Use headings and sub headings
Use bullet points
Look at how newspapers and magazines present content
For SEO, a good blog should be:
650-850 words long
1-2% keyword density
Video blogs – 2 minutes or using things like Vine just a few seconds
A catchy title – I will come on to this!
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Use social proof to make sure we think like sheep
Using plugins like Digg Digg we can show how many other people have shared and engaged with the content
Use call to actions to get us to do something at the end of the blog
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Make users feel welcome
Facilitate engagement by
Asking questions
Talk to the reader directly using words like you and yours
Encourage comments asking readers to comment below
Have an image of your self including your name to allow the user to connect with you personally
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Ensure the foundations of the blog and website are sound, going back to my 1st webinar we need to ensure we
Optimise meta tags
Use Alt Tags for images
Add breadcrumbs for users to find their way around
Link out to resourceful content
Link to your best content
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