Our co-founder Joanna recently spoke about Online Reputation Management at one of our events, and since all of the attendees were super engaged, interested in learning more about OMR, and we got tons of follow-up questions, we figured we’d extend some education on this subject to those who couldn’t make it. Let’s get to it. Shall we?
You already HAVE a reputation online and otherwise, whether you manage it or not. Opinions will be formed. Reviews will be written. And word of mouth will be spoken.
So, what do you want your reputation to be?
If you’re anything like the small business owners we work with, you’re probably feeling like a marathon runner who (at the same time) is constantly juggling a bunch of different projects and deadlines, with a billion things to worry about every single day. (Sound familiar?)
You probably feel like there is no time to, I don’t know, have a personal life. (What even is that?) Let alone stop and “Google” your business and respond to any online feedback.
But we hope at the end of this that you’ve changed your mind and see the value in managing your online reputation because it is absolutely critical in today’s climate.
What’s in a Reputation?
It’s impossible to over-stress how important a good online reputation is today. Having customers creating a positive buzz around your product on Instagram can exponentially grow your business, while a slew of negative reviews could do a lot more damage to your business than you think… if you don’t handle it, or if you don’t handle it the right way.
But don’t fear. That’s where this article comes in. We want to equip you to drive more positive chatter about your business online and help you respond in a mature, professional way to any negative feedback you may receive. Because if you’re a business owner for any length of time, you WILL get a negative review. It’s going to happen. But you don’t have to fear it.
There’s definitely some confusion about online reputation management. To some it stops at just social media monitoring, while to others it’s a mysterious art that their marketing agency barely explained and just handles for them. And maybe others have never heard of it until now and have no idea how it can affect their business. We don’t know where you fall in that group, but it’s our hope that after reading this, you all feel informed and equipped!
So What Exactly is ORM?
According to Techopedia, online reputation management (ORM) is the practice of crafting strategies that shape or influence the public perception of an organization, individual, or other entity on the Internet. It helps drive public opinion about a business and its products and services.
With so many websites available for people to talk about and/or review your business—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Angie’s List, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing, etc, etc—managing your online reputation can seem overwhelming. But the reality is, ORM involves much more than just monitoring your brand across social media platforms and commenting back with some witty emojis (although that is fun… and important ????????). It’s more than just responding to negative reviews, driving more positive reviews, and having a clear plan in place for both. But we’ll start here because managing online reviews is a big part of the work you’ll do from month to month when maintaining your ORM.
Whether users are commenting on your latest Instagram post, leaving a comment on your blog, or posting a Google review about their experience, people are talking about you online. So, what are they saying? And why does it matter?
What People Are Saying About Your Business
Here’s a statistic— about 500 Yelp Reviews are posted every second. EVERY. SECOND. Wait, Whaaat? That’s crazy. But it’s true. And did you know that 88% of online users trust reviews as much as personal recommendations? And 50% of people from the age of 18 to 34 say they trust online reviews even more than the opinions of friends and family.
Driving New Positive Reviews
Not only do users value reviews, but so do search engines. Do you always feel like you’re trying to figure out the highly elusive “SEO”? Well here’s at least one piece of the puzzle you can bet on: search engines highly value positive, recent reviews. So the more monthly positive reviews you have, the higher you will rank in your local area.
Here’s the good news: if you’re a great business, people WANT to leave a review. But the bad news is, they get busy or distracted and may forget. So, it’s important that every business needs a strategy in place to drive positive reviews. Don’t know where to start? Here’s a great place— just ask for them. It’s that simple. Encourage employees to ask for them, and ask again (when customers forget). Make it personal, and thank every reviewer, either with a reply or with a gift.
Responding to Negative Reviews
Alright now to the doozy…. Negative reviews. Our number one piece of advice and biggest takeaway from this article would be: always reply to negative reviews. Always. But never reply while emotional. When answered well, negative reviews can work to your advantage, as they’re a great opportunity to show current and future customers that their feedback matters. Everybody makes mistakes, and your customers know that. But it’s up to you to show them that you know how to handle criticism well—to acknowledge your shortcomings, apologize for them, and communicate how you’ve learned from them.
So if you have a few bad reviews, don’t stress. It’s not as bad as you think. Did you know that 95% of consumers suspect censorship or faked reviews when they don’t see bad scores? So, embrace the bad reviews. Respond to them in a professional and meaningful way, and drive those positive reviews up as best you can to outweigh the bad!
Here’s our rule of thumb: always comment back publicly to every review, whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral. But for negative reviews, first filter if the review is a legitimate one. If you did something wrong, own it. And we’d suggest publicly and privately messaging the reviewer and offering to make the situation right. However, if it’s an over the top, troll-like negative review and you believe it to be not legitimate, comment back anyway, but you don’t necessarily have to go above and beyond unless you want to! Viewers can generally filter those out themselves as invalid.
Comments on Your Own Posts
So, we’ve gone over reviews on review sites, but what about when people are commenting negatively about you in the comment section of your own posts? Anyone remember the Taylor Swift snake emoji situation…?
Listen, Taylor Swift went from thousands of people flooding her comment section every day with snake emojis, to then spinning it and even capitalizing on her bad online reputation by turning the snake into her brand for a massively successful album and record-breaking world tour. Here’s a fun article about all of that if you’re into that sort of thing.
But what does this have to do with you? You may not even have a thousand followers. But the principal still applies. Taylor Swift didn’t comment back or really ever even address those comments. When it comes to commenting back or not, that’s a judgment call you’ll have to make. If someone is unfairly blasting you in your comments, it may be best to simply delete the comment. However, if it’s legitimate like a review, don’t delete it and treat it exactly how you would a negative Google or Facebook review.
To sum up, in general you want to respond to comments just like you would reviews, but in some extreme cases, when responding Misty likely won’t do any good, you could make a judgment call to delete the negative messages and private message the user if there’s no way to resolve it well publicly.
Are People Posting About You?
Besides reviews and comments on your own content, a great way to build a good reputation is to have followers post about you, also known as User-Generated Content.
Today, user-generated content is a must. If you’re a really awesome company and have a great service or product, people will go a step beyond just leaving a positive review on your page and even share about you on their own page. This is the user taking on a role of actively promoting your product for you. Hello, free advertising. You can literally just rock so hard that people post about you for free.
If you have a shop or restaurant, you could give users an avenue like a cool backdrop or a very visual area to post on their own social media. When you provide a place for them to take a photo and post it, it’s very likely that they will. If you don’t have a brick and mortar shop, a great way to get users to post about you is to share posts that people are tagging you in. It will make them feel important and seen, it will give them an incentive to keep posting, and it’ll also show others that if they post about you, it could get shared, too! It’s a win-win for everyone.
What You Say About You
So we’ve talked a lot about what others say about you online and how it attributes to your reputation, but what about what YOU say about you?
Business Account Vs. Personal Account
A big part of your business’s online reputation has to do with your own personal reputation. As a business owner, you’ve tied yourself to your business, so whether you like it or not, how you represent yourself personally (both online and offline) will have a direct effect on your business.
You may think that since you have a separate personal social media account, you can compartmentalize that as separate from your business account. That’s true to an extent, and we applaud you for noticing a difference between what you should post on your own account vs. a business account. However, keep in mind that what you post on your personal is always going to impact your business as well. Like, if you’re slamming people on your personal account, that could greatly affect your business.
Knowing what to post on a personal vs business account can be tricky. For your business account, be sure to develop your unique brand voice and always stick to that. Your brand voice should be distinctly different from the voice of your personal account. And we’d say keep personal posts light-hearted and fun, more behind-the-scenes content on your business account, whereas you can share a lot more on your personal account.
If this is all confusing for you, there are a lot of professional and freelance social media consultants who would love to help you develop your business’s brand online, so feel free to utilize one on a consulting basis for that if you have further questions!
Conclusion
Basically, we’d say online reputation management is a must. Make time for it, even if you don’t feel like you have the time. What are people saying about you? What are you saying back? These are both wildly important to the success or failure of your business.
If people aren’t talking, get them talking! Your customers love you and they may just need a little push to get out there and let the interwebs know just how much they love you!
Good online reputation management is about reacting the right way and at the right time to what people say about your products and services. Sometimes an emotional or a “too late” reaction can cost you. So breathe, and remember, one negative review won’t hurt. You’ve got this. And we hope we’ve helped you get started!
We all do it. The mindless scrolling through our social feeds. Everyone and their mother is online, so getting your posts to stand out in the feed and stop the scroll is becoming more difficult, but it doesn’t have to be intimidating. You just have to get intentional, and we’re here to help.
Maybe you don’t know what else to post, so you just post about your products or services. Maybe you don’t even give a second thought to your posts, but just usually post spur-of-the-moment when you have time to think or you when realize you haven’t posted in a few days. I think we can all agree that this isn’t an ideal scenario. So, if you’re in a rut, you’ve come to the right place.
The problem with posting the same thing all the time is, well, it eventually becomes very easy to tune out. Your feed can easily become white noise, an easy “scroll past” account and then before you know it, you’ve got your followers rethinking the follow. (Or using that ever elusive Mute button. Didn’t know about the mute button? You’ll thank me later.)
Why Diversify?
This one may hurt a bit, so brace yourself. Ready? Okay… let’s do this. Only about 20% of your stream should be about your products or a service promotion. Only 20%. That means for the other 80% of posts, instead of talking, posting, reposting, and posting again about how awesome your product or service is, you should be engaging in conversation and sharing other types of content and information with your audience. It’s so important to bring the personal along with the professional. Your followers don’t want to be sold to 24/7. Share your story. Hey, you could even have a little fun! The only thing you need to remember is to keep all of your posts in line with your brand message.
Diversifying the content that you post will really help to stand out, engage your current followers, and hopefully bring in new ones.
But how do you diversify?
Content Pillars
Content pillars are a great way to organize your content strategy on social media. A content pillar is a key theme that categorizes the type of posts you will share on your social media. Just like the name suggests, your pillars are a foundation for building your content.
Content pillars shouldn’t be too specific. They should be wide, like the trunk of a tree, with the ability to create different branches and limbs within each pillar. It’s up to you how many content pillars you choose.
Not sure how to determine what your content pillars should be? It’s important that all of your pillars are in line with your brand message, and they should also address the needs and values of your target consumer.
But First… Who, What, and Where?
Speaking of your target customer, before we jump into the different types of content you can utilize, there are some important questions you need to ask first that will determine exactly what kind of content you should post. A really good rule of thumb is, before you speak, you should know who you’re speaking to. You wouldn’t speak the same way to a CEO that you do your bestie. You’d say things to your kids that you wouldn’t say to your work colleagues. What are the demographics and behaviors of your target audience? Second, you need to find their outlets. Meet your audience where they are. Don’t spend all your time on Instagram if your target consumer is really on Facebook. And lastly, determine your message. What does your audience need to know about your brand?
1. Who’s your audience? How old is your target customer? How old is your social media audience? What does your customer like? What else are they doing and buying?
2. What platforms do you need to be on based on your audience? If you’re demo is 18-24, Facebook is out and Instagram is in. And vice versa, the 55 and older crowd isn’t really on Instagram, so if that’s your audience, you’ll want to utilize Facebook.
3. What message do you want to communicate through your social media? Some good examples of messages you want to include are ideas like services, about your team, your process, what sets you apart from your competition.
What are Your Content Pillars?
Now that you’ve determined your audience, let’s get started on different types of content pillars.
Products & Services – As I mentioned earlier, promotions should only account for a small percentage of your feed, but they should definitely be there. But because they’ll be so few and far between, make them count! Include an offer that will stop people while scrolling and get them to click.
Educational – These are posts like tips, how-tos, blogs, interviews, and more can add value to your followers, and they’ll usually be really appreciative of your time and expertise. This is something followers stay for. And maybe once they trust your expertise, they’ll become loyal to what you’re offering them!
Humanizing – This includes posts like Behind the Scenes, Team Activities, Emotional Stories, Meet the Team, and more. This should most likely be the bread and butter of your content. Your followers want to know you. And as much as you hate getting your picture taken (we all do!), ya gotta give the people what they want… and in this case, that’s your beautiful face.
Shout Outs – This type of post is a great way to engage with your following. The only thing people want to see more than your pretty face is, well, theirs! Things like Follower of the Week, Partner Spotlights, Follower Submissions, Follower Reposts, Giveaways, and more will make your followers feel appreciated and seen. And they’ll love you for it!
Once you’ve decided on a brand message and figured out which content pillars and platforms are best for your business, it’s time to cultivate the perfect post.
Elements of the Perfect Post
Videos, pictures, clever captions, oh my! Every platform will have its own perks and its own hurdles. But we believe in you! Here are two great tips to stand out in your followers’ feed. Be highly visual. And be very interactive.
Photography should be personal to you, and very eye catching. You have seconds to capture someone’s attention as they scroll through their timeline. You can write the most clever caption there ever was, but if you don’t stop your users’ scroll with a great visual, they’ll never stop and see what you have to share. It’s okay if you don’t have a fancy camera. There are plenty of tutorials online for how to get the most out of that high-tech phone camera! Portrait mode, anyone? We love it. It’s a #godsend.
Videos have been an ever-increasingly huge part of social media in 2018. And the good news is you can utilize videos on every social media platform. Some great ways to interact with your audience on Instagram are via Instagram Stories. These are way more lighthearted and personal than a post. You can also do fun things via stories like ask your followers specific questions (hello, free case study!), and polls are a great way to gauge the temperature of what your followers are thinking.
Captions are intimidating. But they don’t have to be! Just be you. Sitting down and actually taking time to be intentional about your captions instead of writing something on a whim will automatically make them exponentially better.
A Plan is Key
Now that you know your who, what, and where and have some strong content pillars to build your social media content, I’d like to briefly touch on mapping and planning. Mapping with a content calendar helps you to be intentional about which pillars you’re sharing throughout each month, that way you don’t have three posts of the topic in a row. A schedule helps make sure you’re giving even representation to all of your pillars. An ideal month would have a few posts from each pillar, evenly spread out throughout the month.
If you want a more in depth look at how to create and manage a content calendar, here’s a great article!
Conclusion
Alright, so, the good news and the bad news is that online, it’s not all about you. The social media world is all about your followers, so find a way to revolve your world around them. That’s right. For some of us that’s a huge weight off of our selfie-hating shoulders. But for some, it may mean you need to carve out more time to be intentional about what content you’re posting.
You don’t have to start as an expert. Just start somewhere! Ask yourself, what are 3 pillars my business needs (as a bare minimum)? And go from there.
For example, if you’re a retail shop selling handbags, an important pillar might be Follower Reposts. You want your followers to see real fashionable women carrying your bag, so they’ll want to carry your bag as well! But for a handbag company, Behind the Scenes of your process is a pillar that might not make sense for you, because you most likely don’t make your product by hand. Now, for a clay potter or hand-made jewelry maker, that’s a different story. People would probably love to see your process.
So get to work! What makes you you? And what pillars make sense for your business?
Facebook just rolled out a huge marketing initiative to let us know how their News Feed is changing. They’re hitting a lot of concerns head on, such as fake news, lack of personal connection, spam, and more.
I mean, if you haven’t seen one of their commercials yet, we’d be surprised. It’s like, every time we want to binge The Office or Parks & Rec, with each new commercial break we’re *inspired* by how Facebook is changing to become more meaningful. But really, you should read up on all of those changes because they’re not as boring as they sound—in fact, they’re fascinating.
But for our purposes here, we’ll just be talking about the News Feed Optimization (NFO) changes as they relate to how your business page specifically will (or won’t ????) interact with your followers on their feeds going forward.
Since Facebook’s number of daily active users is leaps and bounds above that of any other platform, many are saying that NFO is the new SEO. And we’d tend to agree, for the most part. So, what is NFO? Let’s break it down…
The Algorithm
The NFO algorithm is always being tweaked, much like it’s SEO counterpart, Google’s PageRank. But this recent update is far more than a tweak and more like an overhaul. So, we wanted to highlight some of the changes so you know how they’ll affect your business’s Facebook presence.
Remember how we said Facebook rolled out a marketing campaign to let us know about all the changes they’re implementing to make our interactions on Facebook more meaningful? They’ll do this by means of tweaking their algorithm, which has over 100,000 signals, all of which determine what’s shown on the news feed. And everyone’s news feed is tailored specifically to them. So, with 2.4 billion users, this is not a small project…
The values used to shape the news feed have always been to inform and entertain. But now major emphasis is being placed on encouraging deeper, more meaningful conversations between friends and family.
What does this mean for the ranking of content published by businesses on their Facebook Pages? Well, it’s not the best news we’ve ever given you… but it’s not necessarily debilitating, either.
Alright let’s get into the nitty-gritty.
1. Page Posts
Let’s just rip this band-aid off. Shall we? Unfortunately, we’re told that there will be less content directly from business pages in the news feed. The content with the highest priority will now be more personal to the user, i.e. more from friends and family and less from brands and publishers. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, announced that “public content–posts from businesses, brands, and media–is crowding out the personal moments,” and he’s focusing his efforts on correcting that. But not all is lost! If you’re active on Facebook Ads, you’re dealing with a separate beast altogether, and in terms of this ranking change, the visibility of your ads won’t be affected.
Facebook says that content from pages will still be an important part of the community, and pages that are trustworthy will still be prioritized in the news feed. How high? Well, it’s hard to say because who even understands these algorithms anyway?
Since content shared and talked about between friends will be prioritized, a great way to keep your business in the news feed is to encourage your followers to post about your business. Jewelers, for example, may run a promotion where they invite users to take pictures wearing their jewelry and offer to highlight the best photo. When Facebook sees that users are posting from their own accounts with tags to your business, it’s more likely your own content will be prioritized in the news feed.
Also, we’re thinking that since posts with a lot of meaningful engagement from followers will be even more valuable with the new algorithm, you should definitely check out our blog called, “10 Ways to Drastically Improve Your Social Media Engagement” if you haven’t already! Lots of good tips over there on how to get your audience talking!
2. Comments Vs. Likes
Posts that draw a lot of comments will be prioritized in the news feed over posts that only get a lot of likes. Liking is pretty easy, and therefore isn’t considered as meaningful. So, basically what you need to know is that until you hear otherwise, comments > likes.
The algorithm also weighs long comments more heavily than short comments. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is the idea that if a user takes the time to write a comment that’s thoughtful or ignites more conversations, especially on a phone (because #bigthumbprobs), the content of the post must be more valuable. So, that post will rank higher on others’ feeds as well.
Another positive here is that this will most likely cut down on the one-word or emoji bot-generated comments used to positively affect one’s news feed ranking, and what Facebook thinks will lead to less false likes and comments and more genuine connection.
3. Video
We’ve talked a lot about how video is becoming more and more important online. Well, Facebook’s Vice President in charge of the News Feed recently addressed this saying, “The biggest thing has been just the explosion of video. Video is a paradigm shift in a lot of different ways. Video is an important part of the ecosystem. It’s been consistently growing. But it’s more passive in nature. There’s less conversation on videos, particularly public videos. We’ve done a lot to try and nurture it… [but] you tend to just sit back and watch it. And while you’re watching it, you’re not usually liking or comment or speaking with friends…. [so] there will be less video.”
But video won’t necessarily automatically be less valuable, while friend content is automatically more valuable. The whole point of the change is that whatever inspires more meaningful engagement is more valuable, so if your video fits that criteria, it will be seen. And if your video content already inspires a lot of conversation, it may actually be seen more with the new algorithm!
Conclusion
We think all of this is pretty cool because it’s going to cause a lot of businesses to get real, and spend time really thinking about their posts, keeping in mind what their specific audience actually wants to engage with, and how their content can positively affect the people in their community. (BTW, you’re probably already doing a lot of this planning in your market research & profiling for any well-executed advertising efforts.)
If we could break down the news feed changes in one simple phrase it would be: “Less sales. More connection.” And we like that.
Picture this: you’re single. Like, sticking the fork directly into the whole pie single, and every time you open your computer there’s another engagement announcement. Meanwhile you’ve got a closet full of bridesmaid gowns that, as the character Kevin from 27 Dresses says are, “instruments of torture inflicted on you by a bride who wants you to look ugly.” Basically.
The old “always a bridesmaid never a bride” struggle is sometimes *too* real on social media, and I’m not just talking about being engaged to be married. It often feels like engagement is happening for everyone else while you’re sitting at home every night, waiting for a click or a like, wondering what you’re doing wrong, or what you could possibly do to get someone, anyone, to notice your business.
Engagement on social media can be defined simply as getting your audience to like, share, click and comment on your posts. Why is engagement important? Well, mainly because it helps you know if you’re posting things your followers actually like or care about, and it helps grow your business. Sounds simple enough. But in reality, it feels anything but simple. If you have little or no engagement on your social media, it’s time to reassess your content strategy. If you’re feeling frustrated or don’t know how to stand out in the crowded space of social media, we’re sharing a few tips. Here are 10 ways to drastically improve your social media engagement.
1. Stop the Scroll
The first step in getting someone to engage with your brand is to stop their mindless scrolling. You can’t engage with an audience that’s thumbing past you. The best way to get their attention is to post things they want to see. Grab their attention with eye-catching, unique, high quality photography (i.e. not shot on your iPhone 4). It’s also super important to note that photos including faces get skipped over way less.
Research shows that simply adding an image to your post on Facebook and Twitter can result in a way higher interaction rate. On the same note, an Instagram image with human faces gets 38% more likes and an increase in comments by 32% on average. Pretty sure it has something to do with those algorithms no one understands, but either way… chin up and say, “cheese!”
2. Be Funny
Most people on social media want to be entertained — not sold to. I mean think about it, people go to their social media apps to relax, maybe to escape the stress of life, and keep up with people they care about. So it’s important to be positive, and humor is a great way for your brand to promote on social media while still keeping an audience engaged. Keep it light and fun, or people will begin to ignore or even (duh duh duh) unfollow your posts.
3. Use Simple Calls to Action
A great way to get more engagement is simply by asking for it. Start the conversation. On Facebook, you can ask for a specific reaction with the different reaction buttons. A fun one on Twitter is to ask your audience to respond with their favorite GIF. A great way to encourage a reaction from your followers on Instagram is to use emojis as prompts.
This approach sets the tone and shows the reader how you hope they’ll react. For example, ask everyone if they’re looking forward to an event or the launch of a new product, and prompt them to answer with a ???? in the comments if they’re excited. Or, if you share something humorous, include the classic ????. It’s relatable, and it lets your audience know what you’re sharing is funny (as if they didn’t already know).
4. Invite Followers to Share Content
User generated content is a buzz-phrase that a lot of marketers talk about, and with good reason. It’s one of the most effective methods of social media marketing and it’s pretty inexpensive. (Don’t have a clue what user generated content is? Read about it here.) The truth is, people consider information coming from a personal friend/someone they follow to be more trustworthy than business branded content. Utilizing user generated content helps you engage and share content through your passionate customers. As a result, you’re able to show consumers why they can trust your brand. It leads to higher engagement and ultimately grows your sales. Win-win.
5. Share Your Followers’ Tagged Photos
Think about how much time people spend trying to get shoutouts on social media from celebrities they love. Let’s be real, if GaryVee shared a photo of me on his Instagram, I might die. (Wait, what?) And here’s the thing, your loyal followers feel that way about you too. There’s value in shouting out to your loyal customers who love your products or services. Think about how many people they’re going to tell that you shared their photo! It’s really a great feeling to be acknowledged by a brand, and it will certainly either convert someone into a loyal follower, or keep them a loyal follower.
6. Be Receptive To Your Audience
More and more people are turning to social media to ask customer service related questions. They’re tired of arguing with automated phone robots or waiting a week to get an email reply. They know most businesses are active on social media because that’s where people are communicating. When someone DMs you, it’s important to respond within 5 minutes. (Side note: Facebook actually displays a badge for businesses that average a response time less than 5 minutes so that users know they get quick answers.)
Take 10 minutes a day to sit down and comment back to every comment and message. Whether it’s answering a question or giving a ♥️ or a ???? back to a nice comment, it really doesn’t take that much time, and it adds a personal touch that will go far with your followers.
7. Work as a Team
People love getting free stuff. Plain and simple. A great way to gain a bigger following and increase your audience is by teaming up with other companies or charities to host giveaways. You can use it to gather email addresses and even gain new followers. Giveaways are a great way to grow your audience because, by combining with others, you gain some of their audience as well!
8. Get Personal With Stories
While posts in the feed need to be carefully curated, stories are much more personal so they’re a little more chill. People love and crave genuine connections, and stories are a fun way to let people know about you, your day-to-day, and a behind the scenes of your business. You don’t have to stress as much over the quality of the content, but you do still want to stay on brand. Another huge plus to stories is they always display at the top of your feed and will never get hidden from your followers based on some mean ol’ algorithm.
9. Poll Your Followers
Case studies used to be very time consuming and expensive, but thanks to social media, you can get real time feedback from your customers at the push of a cute little button. Last month Instagram introduced polls as a part of their story feature. Twitter and Instagram polls are a great way to get people to stop scrolling through and engage with you, and as a bonus, they’re a super easy way to get really useful feedback from your customers.
10. Use Live Streaming
Live Streaming is the same deal as Stories, but with a little twist. You can use live streams for a personal story, or a fun behind the scenes of your business. Another great use for live streams is a teaching moment or even to announce a new product. Live streaming really is a fun way to answer FAQs or just say hey to your audience.
Conclusion
I’m sure we didn’t have to tell you why engagement is important. Retaining clients and growing your business are both major, but the process feels anything but simple sometimes. We get it. We really hope these tips help! Please feel free to let us know how these tips work for you!
Content creation is one of the key business components that, while the most important, is probably the most stressful. How can you always be expected to come up with new ideas all the time? And further, how can you keep these ideas innovative and fresh? Here are five ways to encourage creativity and innovation while still in the office:
1. Make a list of topics
Even if these topics don’t end up on your company blog or your LinkedIn profile, this is one of the simplest ways to start the brainstorming process. Inc. has a few different kinds of techniques for this. When you’re making this list, make sure to use whatever medium you are most comfortable with (whether that is sticky notes, computer, whiteboard, etc.)
2. Take a walk
As simple as this seems, sometimes it just takes getting up from your desk and taking a lap around the office. You might spark a conversation that turns into content, or you might see something that reminds you of this cool article that you read recently. This oldie but goodie New York Times article proves that a walk might just be your best bet to boost creative thinking.
3. Think about your audience
Who are you trying to reach? Are you writing a corporate post with references? Are you writing a personal article for your own blog? All of these options have different people that should direct your content creation. If you work or are near the people that might be reading your writing, ask them what they would be interested in reading. This might even add to your list of topics. Forbes does a great job of articulating some questions for you to answer about your audience.
4. Find your “content crush”
Who is the personal or professional person who you admire? You love their website, their social media, their blog, or whatever they create. Read, write, research everything that they’ve made or done that you really like. When you’ve done your background work, create a list of the reasons that you’re inspired by them. Maybe one of those reasons is something that you’ve been striving for, and this could kickstart your creativity too! Here are some #artgoals from visual artists that might help you get started on your content crush list.
5. Start writing
Content creation starts with just that—creating content. Nothing helps more than putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Some inspiration might ease your mind. The easiest way to keep writing is to start writing, so if you follow these steps (or create your own), you will feel empowered when you sit down to employ your creativity. We want to see those words published! The more opportunities you take to write, the more you open yourself up to people reading and enjoying your content. Five steps later, and now you’re off to write (or walk) your way to a better, more creative feed.
Growing Your Business with Facebook Live
Last year, you may have begun to see certain large, geologically-named celebrities (looking at you, The Rock) streaming live content in your Facebook feed. Then your friends may have begun streaming their everyday journeys. In March, you may have noticed the opportunity to watch live videos more prominently in your newsfeed. More recently, you might have tried reacting to live videos and found that you can now “love,” “laugh,” and “appear shocked,” to name a few. This month, you might have seen the new video hub on Facebook mobile. And then of course, you may have read about the F8 summit and Facebook’s announcement that live streaming would now be open to all devices, including drones and hi-def cameras. But what does that mean for you, a small business or individual?
Choose Your Content Wisely
The algorithm change announced in March to show live-streaming videos more frequently in your followers’ newsfeeds is only helpful to you if you have meaningful content to share. So as an individual or small business, you need to be more selective and deliberate in choosing what content you stream live, rather than less. Because the algorithm will show live content at a higher frequency, your followers have a better chance of seeing it. Meaning, if you’re putting out content that’s not your best, your followers have a higher chance of seeing it, which could lead to unfollows. Your best bet is to choose deliberate, meaningful content to stream live in order to garner the best reactions. Announce your live-streaming times beforehand to help grow your audience and be sure to follow up your live stream with a recap and link to the video.
Do Your Research
Before beginning a live broadcast, look up best practices for creating live video, and make sure you understand how the platform works. Facebook allows you to take live video using both the front and back cameras on your phone, and with the advent of other devices, your options are pretty much unlimited. Similar to a regular post, you can also add copy to your live broadcast describing the topic. Once the video is live on your wall, you can go back and edit your video. Learn what your options are and how to make the most out of your live broadcast. Check out these tips from Social Media Examiner to help you get started.
Know You’re Not Competing with TV
Although there’s been some buzz about Facebook Live eventually attracting live-streaming television, director of product at Facebook responsible for overseeing Facebook Live Fidji Simo says that Live is not competing with traditional television. The focus now is on user experience, says Simo. She did note that Facebook Live could potentially supplement traditional television. For example, there have been a number of cases where TV journalists have gone live after their traditional broadcast to expand on a story they were covering. Currently, however, there’s no ad play to tempt TV marketers, and Simo doesn’t see that happening any time soon.
Founder/CEO of Deep Focus Ian Schaefer agrees. Although there may be some demand for certain live events, like sports (Twitter has already nabbed the rights to live stream Thursday Night Football in the fall in conjunction with the NFL), Schaefer is unclear whether there is any interest in premium live content beyond that. “The push for live is bizarre,” he says, “because there’s not really much precedent outside of sports for there to be any kind of money to be made from streaming live video. There’s not much that indicates to me that a generation that’s going mobile is going to be doing more live-show watching.”
So rest easy. You may be competing with larger brands and bigger marketing budgets, but Facebook Live hasn’t reached the deep pockets of TV advertisers, yet.
The takeaway: Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook to see what we’re doing with Facebook Live! Share your live journeys with us and we might just return the favor.