Ch. 12 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Creating the Sizzle

Creating content for your business’ social media channels is a fun way to get creative while engaging your customers. My colleagues: content is all around us. It is everything you do for your business. Every conversation you have with your clients, every email sent, in every customer complaint we take -  there’s a story and a lesson to be learned within all of those small details we tend to overlook.

There are a few key pointers to touch base on while we’re sourcing content.

Offer a variety of rich content for your audience.

• Rich content is really the focus here. We want the information we share with others to be saturated with unique things that they may not have known before. Offering a variety of information, whether it’s a compilation of quotes, infographics, surveys or interviews, makes it a pot of gold for your customers to hit that, “share” button.

Make it look professional.

• It’s pretty awkward visiting a business’ page only to find dark, grainy photos with harsh filters. Photography isn’t everyone’s forte and that’s quite okay. Just keep in mind to consider the composition, clarity, and color of the image. If those words already have you spinning, consider using an app to enhance your photos! Some of our favorite photo editing apps that make it easy to create beautiful images are VSCO, Photo Editor by Aviary, and the good old photo editing options on your iPhone.

• If you’re looking for something more involved like making a video for your business, hiring a local videographer might just be the solution. A videographer can help wonders in terms of figuring out frames, angles, and a smooth storyboard to better tell your story.

• Check out some of Handlr’s videos from our YouTube Channel:

Ballin’ on a Budget?

• Get creative with your iPhone and capture moments yourself! If you need inspiration, see some of the greatest photography shot with the iPhone that Apple compiled here.

Be persistent!

It's easy to throw in the towel when your content isn't picking up traction - but that's expected. Marketing Ninja, Mike Linville of BlackDogMarketing assures us that it takes about 12-18 months before the traffic begins to pick up. He suggests a couple things to help speed up the process:

• Strategize on how to share your content. (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Stumbleupon)
• The 5 Day Strategy - promoting your content for 5 days for maximum exposure on different channels.
• Sell the sizzle, then the steak. Give your customers what they want, then reel in the traffic with the information they need.

Just remember to inform and/or inspire your audience and make it relevant to your them.  After all, if you’re spending all this time creating posts and writing articles that no one pays attention to, it’s absolutely a waste of time. Be genuine, and try not to overthink about the process. Social media is creative, fun and a great growing process for your business. Ready, Set, Create!

A picture’s worth a thousand...dollars?

Blake Warren, Director of Marketing at Handlr

Looking for a proven, sure-fire way to boost engagement and gain more attention to your business? Compelling visuals can be just as important as the content, using high-quality, attractive images can help tell your company's story, and engage your viewers.

Hubspot recently dropped some stats regarding the importance of quality images:

• Facebook posts featuring images get 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images.

• Articles featuring an image every 75-100 words pull double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images.

• Infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content.

• Buffer reported that for its user base, tweets with images were retweeted 150 percent more than text-only tweets.

Clearly, if photos aren’t a focus in your social media, email campaigns and other customer outlets, they should be. Now where do you find these images? Obviously if you have the means, taking photos or having your staff take them can provide real, genuine insight into your business. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have access to quality cameras and an iPhone can only take us so far. Or maybe your business doesn’t exactly offer the most exciting subjects to photograph. So, while Shutterstock and other paid services provide great quality photos, there are plenty of free options to consider as well. Here are a couple of our favorites:

Picjumbo, “totally free photos for your commercial and personal works,” Thousand of High-res photos with an easy to browse catalogue.

FreeImages has a huge library of images provided by the public. Most are free, however a few do ask you to pay.

Shutterstock - If you’re willing to budget in a small monthly payment, you simply can’t go wrong with Shutterstock. Boasting the most extensive library of images on the web, there’s a reason it’s number one.

Want to edit your new photos? Canva is a great option for a free editing tools to customize and get those images just right.

Ch. 9 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Get #Instafamous

You probably stumbled upon this article through another site like LinkedIn, Reddit or Facebook. That in itself is proof that social media is prevalent and crucial as a source of retrieving information. In the small business world, there’s a stigma around social media marketing that leads business owners to focus their efforts elsewhere. “I can’t gauge how many people are reading this,” and “I pay for ads but don’t see traction from it,” are common frustrations when you’re trying to get your name out there.

In our previous post, we mentioned The Rule of 7, which states that it takes 7 impressions or touches on a customer before they make a purchasing decision. Social media platforms can be a very heavyweight fighter in being one (or more) of those touches. Here are some tips to keep in mind about managing social media for your business.

1. Understand Who Your Audience is.

Before diving into this any further, identify who is looking at your posts. If your business is blindly posting content that isn’t relevant to your audience, your efforts won't yield positive results. Understand their lifestyle, know why they’re interested in you, and cater your verbiage and content around this information. This also differentiates a bit further on different platforms. For instance, LinkedIn followers expect more, “professional” information than let’s say, Instagram followers. That being said, Instagram followers might expect pretty, visual pictures and videos that inspire. This means your content has to get creative in different formats but consistent messaging is key. Which leads me to my next point…

2. Be consistent, everywhere.

Plan a well-defined message that you want your customers to know about your brand and/or business. Then relay that throughout all of your social media platforms. If your business is pushing out a lot of different messages, it’s a guarantee that your content will get lost in the noise, and might just confuse your customers as to what you're trying to say. Instead, hone in on one aspect of your business and drive it through all the way. A great starting point in figuring this out is asking, “What’s my company mission/belief that keeps me in business?”

Although each social media platform looks different in layout, keep your logo consistent, and your branding similar everywhere. This way, your customers can quickly identify your business and it’s a more professional way of representing your brand. It’s a good idea to have a light and dark version of your logo for the instances where the background differs. Consider having a strong accent color for your business and neutral tones to complement it. 

3. Get Viral

When you offer content and information that is relevant to your consumers, they would feel inclined to pass along your marketing message. The impact of creating viral content is explosive in the world wide web and can put your business in the spotlight of many potential new customers and leads. Viral marketing involves more crafted content than normal. When brainstorming for viral content, just remember that it has to be unique, inspiring, and driven with emotion in order to get people to repost it. In a statistic reported on KissMetrics, viral content can get 500-1000 times more of a reach than neutral content.

4. Track and Analyze

We asked LA based Social Media Superhero, Nicholas Mar to share best practices for tracking a business' success online. He says, "using multiple platforms to track analytics help us really figure out how our audience reacts to our content." Using management platforms like Hootsuite or Sprout, in conjunction with Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics, paints a very detailed picture that guides the content of future posts.  Facebook insights provides helpful information about the demographics of your audience, as well as high-traffic times for when your customers are looking the most. Squarespace lets you check how many people visit your page, where they’re coming from, and what pages they fall off on. Frequent the analytics page of your platforms to find a goldmine of information. Then, craft your page and schedule your posts accordingly to maximize the potential of your content.

To keep it short and sweet, social media marketing can strengthen your brand image and will convert into concrete sales when done right. Keep your messaging and branding consistent, and offer relevant, unique content. Lastly, assess often how well your posts are doing with information offered to you and craft your posts accordingly.