The Social Media Championship: How NFL Teams Stack Up

Super Bowl XLVIII is only a few short weeks away and I couldn’t be more excited. And it’s not only because I’m a major football fanatic (#GoBroncos), but also because it’s one of the biggest social media events of the year.

Real-time marketing has become an absolute necessity not only around the Super Bowl, but the entirety of the NFL season. In recent years, teams and players have caught on to the importance of social media, harnessing its power to dig deep and capture the emotions of their fans and consistently engage with them all year long.

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Social Media Coaching On A Budget – Learn To Do It Right

Do you try hard to be successful on social media but things are just not happening? You are not alone. Navigating social media sounds like an easy process, but it’s really hard work. In fact, it is such hard work that a whole industry has formed around it, with experts in every area and aspect. Social media is no longer a thing kids do to be entertained. It has evolved into hard business, generating millions in sales revenue every year, branding names among an audience that’s not easily reached through any other medium.

Avoid The Bad

When business growth and revenue crucially depend on your online and social media presence, you shouldn’t go this way alone, and you shouldn’t make mistakes. Mistakes are easily made, they are live immediately, and within one second, have reached an audience of possibly millions. Have someone take a screenshot of a tweet gone bad and your name might be tarnished for a long time.

Take this recent example. When the Los Angeles International Airport was recently in the news for an ongoing shooting, the City of Newport Beach’s Twitter account tweeted this:

Even though it was taken down very soon after it was tweeted, the immediate impact was devastating. The backlash was huge, people were quite upset about using a tragedy like that to market a destination (or any product for that matter). The backlash was, in fact, so big that the PR director who tweeted it, got fired. In today’s social media landscape, one must be extremely sensitive and aware of pitfalls and former faux-pas to know what not to do.

Grow Your Business Instead

Let’s forget about crisis for a minute and talk about sales and community growth. When you are on social media and you are not generating the results you want to see, you are wasting your time and money that you could have spent more wisely. How many hours have you spent last month on social media that you could have spent somewhere else more effectively? How much extra revenue, name recognition, and media mentions has it brought you? If you can’t answer these questions satisfactorily, it’s time to make a game plan change.

Here’s a great example of one of our clients. In February 2013, we started working with Goodwill of Orange County. Their social media numbers were dismal, their community was non-existent. Their goal was to go from 700 likes to 20,000 by the end of 2013. Our goal at Branding Personality was to get to those 20,000 likes and also to make those likes meaningful. This meant we wanted to create a community that would actively engage with the Facebook page, share posts and leave comments. When this happens and you get a new audience excited, you convert Facebook likes into new customers.

We exceeded our goal. We hit the 20,000 likes in the end of October, two months before deadline, and our audience is actively engaged with an approximate 15% audience engagement rate at all times (that’s outstanding!). Sales have reflected the community growth accordingly.

Exceed Your Goals

Not only did we reach our goal, however; we actually brought Goodwill of Orange County from the bottom of about 200 Goodwill organizations nationally, to be the number 1 Goodwill! This is the kind of result everyone wants to see – so how did we do it?

Learn How

Branding Personality has created a membership-only coaching program to teach you just that. This program is designed for small to medium-sized businesses who do not have the budget to let us take over completely. This program is designed to teach an in-house person the basics of social media and walks members through strategic approaches and how to achieve goals, on a month by month basis.

This is a social media coaching program for businesses on a budget. With this program, you’ll learn how to do it right and receive the following:

• Monthly webinars + Q&A (recordings archived and accessible through membership area)
• Monthly meetups
• Platform-specific recorded Social Media 101 webinars
• Receive recordings of each webinar
• Social Media Lead Tracking System with video tutorial
• Social Media Lead Follow Up System with video tutorial
• Receive instant social media leads by email
• Analytics of all phone call leads that are generated through social media
• Receive advice from Branding Personality’s social media experts
• Daily social media checklist
• Content calendar template
• Receive weekly email updates
• Special offers
• Access to members’ community for questions, feedback, and support

You can read more about the program and how to become a member of the Social Media Success Training System here. Please feel free to leave a comment with your questions or suggestions.

How To Amplify Your Brand’s Reach Online

When you plan a meeting, you would not want your audience to look like this image, right? Well, when you plan a virtual audience, you wouldn’t want your audience to look like this either. So when you think of building your audience and amplifying your brand, you need to think of a good marketing plan to fill those real or virtual seats. In order to achieve this goal,  it is important to set attainable goals. It is equally important to have a strategic plan in place that will help you reach this goal. Seeing progress and results in a marketing campaign are the best signs of success. At Branding Personality, we work hard to keep track of our progress and are proud to see great outcomes throughout any campaign. (more…)

How To Attract Gen Y – Are You Being The Right Kind Of Social?

Over the past year I’ve really noticed the change in social media, and how it is being used beyond personal use and being more integrated into business. And after reading this article about why social media is more important than ever before, I couldn’t help but agree. This is where businesses today should start to focus more on – their digital presence, their social media profiles. (more…)

8 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

Companies who have waited to get started with social media still have an opportunity to get started with website updates, social media interaction, blogs, and other digital marketing tactics.

Whether you’re the owner of a small company, or running a corporation, if bringing your digital marketing in-house isn’t an option, working with an agency is an optimum solution.

Buyer Beware

The problem is that there are plenty of agencies out there who are ready to take advantage of people who don’t understand social media, web analytics, website design and development, and SEO. These agencies can charge customers unfair prices and may not deliver on their claims because they assume their clients won’t know any better. Clients sign up for a contract and are able to say, “We’re online” but aren’t seeing ROI, and aren’t incorporating their digital marketing into their overall marketing mix. Clients probably have no idea what their website is or isn’t capable of, what level of engagement they have with customers, or if the SEO research the agency is doing is working.

Here are 8 questions to ask before hiring an outside agency

• Does the agency have an updated, modern website? If the agency’s site looks old, is difficult to navigate, and not attractive, chances are your website won’t be either.
• Does the agency have examples of their work on their site? (Portfolio) This gives you an idea of their aesthetic, types of clients they work with, and their creative capabilities.
• Do they have clients you can call for a reference/recommendation?
• Does the agency offer a free consultation?  This gives you and the agency time to see if the relationship is a good fit, bounce ideas, and get a feel for how the agency works.
• How often do they send analytics, and how often will they schedule meetings to review the analytics? (a monthly meeting is ideal for a meeting)
• Do analytics cost extra? If they do, I don’t recommend hiring that agency. Analytics show the progress and successes of your and the agency’s work. Agencies should WANT to show you the progress of campaigns.
• If the agency will be doing SEO for you, make sure you get notifications of which keywords they’re testing and the progress of that testing. (Again, this should not cost extra.)
• Will the agency or will you be updating the website? This is something to discuss with the agency to figure out the best solution for your company’s needs. If the website will be updated daily, someone in-house should be able to update it.

Time Flies

One of the last things to consider is the length of the contract. I’ve talked to many companies who got “a great deal” by signing up for a 3-year contract. What ended up happening is they forgot about their website, didn’t work with the agency (and the agency didn’t call them to discuss updates) so the agency got a lot of money for not a lot of work. A 1-year contract is the longest I’d recommend because that is enough time for the agency to test out campaigns, build up engagement, and to see if this is a relationship you want for long-term.

What other questions do you recommend asking an agency? Are there questions you wish you would have asked before working with an agency? Let me know in the comments section, or call Branding Personality at 1.888.747.3263.

Lori Johnson, MBA, blogs for Branding Personality. She works in the healthcare industry providing social, website, and branding strategies. Connect with her on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

5 Common Social Media Mistakes Brands Commit

As I was doing my daily reading this morning, I came across this article. It resonated quite well with me. Here at Branding Personality, we consult many clients that come to us with exactly these problems. ‘5 Common Social Media Mistakes Brands Commit‘ originally appeared on PR Daily. Digital marketing has come a long way in the last few years, evolving from a nice addition to your marketing strategy to a necessity for most businesses.

Thankfully, most small- and medium-size businesses (SMEs) avoid creating a social media presence just for the sake of being online, but there are other traps they fall into instead. Here are the most common problems. (more…)

How To Become A Super Achiever For Your Business

I just read an article on Forbes about how to become a super achiever for your business. All ten points that the author, Jenna Goudreau, made focused on personal attitude, smart thinking, and doing the right things.

As I was reading her advice, I realized that all of it also translates into social media success. If you apply the advice on how to be a super-achiever personally to social media, your potential of becoming a social media super-achiever is just as great. Apply it to your business, and you will probably see the results you’ve always wanted to see. (more…)

Social Media: You Get What You Give

At Branding Personality, one of the most often asked questions we hear is “How can I get more fans and followers?” I was thinking about this as I read an awesome blog post by Bryan Kramer “Social: The Best Cocktail Party Ever.”

If you go to a party, sulk in a corner, grab your food and head back to your corner, what value do you bring to the party? Conversely, if you go to the party, say hi to a few people, but never share information or conversation, what did you truly give? (Why are you at this party anyway?) (more…)

Facebook Changes its News Feed – Will Advertisers’ Engagement drop?

Facebook announced changes to the News Feed today. The updates center around the increasingly photo-driven social world, and the popularity of visuals. Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the way the world shares information has changed from text-based interaction to visual communication, and that the new updates will revolve around the need to de-clutter the News Feed.

The updated News Feed design was created around three principles that will help create a more visually pleasing experience.

#1 Richer Stories

As Facebook’s Director of Design, Julie Zhou, noted, the News Feed experience really comes down to stories. The update to the News Feed will enlarge photos and will place them front and center in order to immerse users directly into the visual stories shared by their friends, family, and public figures they have chosen to follow.

Facebook wants to give users a richer, simpler and more beautiful News Feed so people can find out what’s going on in the social world around them without having to dig too deeply. As a result, the new design will give more space on the News Feed to photos, article shares and check-ins.

Additionally, when friends share a photo, video or article, their face will appear alongside the shared content so you can scroll over their profile to see what exactly they are saying about the content, and what kind of comments have spawned off of their reaction to what’s being shared.

 #2 Choice of Feed

With the new update, Facebook users will now have more power over the type of content that occupies their News Feed. Instead of skimming the surface of conversation, the update positions Facebook more as a traditional newspaper, with sections, like sports, photos, music, etc., that users can choose to get content from.

With the all friends feed, you can view stories and status updates from your entire friends list. If you want to trim your News Feed down, you can choose the close friends feed in order to see content from those near and dear to you. The music feed lets you see content from the musicians you like, like concert showtimes and recent album releases. The photos feed will show users photos and photos only. And the following feed will show you content from all the pages and public figures you have chosen to give a “like” to.

However, this ability to choose the type of feed you want might pose problems for advertisers and company pages. Unless fans specifically choose the following feed, fan engagement could drop off significantly for businesses, which would require company pages to use promoted posts or spend more money on Facebook advertising.

#3 Consistency Between Interfaces

Facebook is striving to give users more consistency and material similarity across all devices- smartphones, tablets and desktops. With the update, Facebook will be more easily navigable, the News Feed will look and feel the same across all devices, and there will be a mobile-inspired web design for PC and desktop users.

Overall, the News Feed changes place a premium on visuals. Brands and companies must understand this in order to keep pace with the engagement wave that will undoubtedly change as the update continues to roll out. Text-based content will see a drastic decrease in engagement levels, so it will be advantageous to center content calendars and marketing campaigns around eye-popping visuals.

Facebook indicated that they will give the update to a small audience at first, beginning today, and will expand outwards as they continue to get feedback and fix any bugs that may occur.

The first feedback we have received is that this design looks very similar to Google Plus, and the mobile interface looks like Instagram. What do you think of the changes that Facebook has planned?

Content Marketing Workshop: The Honest Company

This is a 60-90 minute content marketing workshop designed for a social media and/or marketing team. This workshop can be done as a small group activity, or you can divide a large group into 2-4 groups for the Analysis Exercises and Challenge Questions.

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze an example of a company that uses content marketing to consistently engage with customers and build strong brand awareness
• Discuss how The Honest Company uses social media platforms i.e. different types of content and customer engagement
• Apply knowledge to takeaway challenge questions to perform self-analysis of your company’s content marketing (more…)