The Power of Social Media Consistency on Building Your Brand

consistency-online-marketing-social-media

The Power of Social Media Consistency on Building Your Brand

by Frederika Angus

“He’s there every morning,” I thought as a drove by the familiar white house with the large porch. “I wonder where he is. Is he ok?” I further wondered as I continued down the street.

He is the older guy that sits on his porch every morning, sometimes alone but often with friends, and waves to the cars and their passengers on their way about their daily travels. During the summer, I look forward to taking the (quiet) drive back home from dropping my boys off at summer camp. Not only because of the quiet, but also because this gentleman gives me something to look forward to.

You could certainly say that his wave to each passerby everyday is not such a big deal. Why would that be a highlight of my morning routine? I don’t even know his name!

Today our method of connection is a little different from that of generations before us. Instead of waiting for letters to be delivered from the postal service, we send emails. Text messages have replaced my personal favorite way to communicate with other kids in class, passing intricately folded notes containing instructions for the recipient to check a box “yes, no or maybe so.” Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms have moved in front of sitting down on the front porch or gathering in the backyard to talk with our neighbors and friends.

The world we live in today has fostered our digital connections and that isn’t a bad thing. I sometimes hear the complaints of those who wish that things would go back to the days where things were simple and people actually talked and developed “real connection.”

Brene’ Brown states in her book Daring Greatly that “connection is why we’re here. We are hard-wired to connect to others, it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.

I propose to you that our  social connections help foster the meaning and purpose that we bring to others and also to our own lives. Connecting online through email, social media and via our smartphones expands the number of people that our businesses and brands are able to reach.

But what does social media have to do with the missing guy sitting on the porch that waves everyday?

Everything.

This gentleman has impacted my day by his consistency. And if he can do it with just a simple wave, how much more can your brand use social platforms to impact many more by showing up daily?

Your consistency is key when it comes to using social media to help your brand to be found, be heard and be profitable. Engaging with your fans is not a sometime thing but an everyday activity. Just like the man on the porch, when you show up consistently those that follow you come to expect you and a deeper connection is built. People begin to stop paying attention if you do not maintain a consistent presence. With all of the distractions social media, consistency helps your brand to break through the clutter.

Take some time every day to check your social media profiles, respond to fans, ask questions, and start conversations. You’ll build a brand that people can connect to and trust!

I believe in you!

Frederika Angus

Charlotte Area Digital Marketing Consultant, Frederika Angus, Partners with HootSuite

Charlotte, NC June 5, 2013 –  http://nextlevelvision.com – Charlotte based digital marketing and branding consulting firm NextLevelVision.com and Frederika Angus are proud to announce that we are now HootSuite Certified and also a HootSuite Solution Partner.

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Yammer, Tumblr and more.

Understanding and unleashing the power of social media for businesses to connect with and impact people has long been a passion for Frederika Angus. After over 12 years working with Fortune 100 clients such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Allstate, she has brought her digital marketing experience to businesses large and small to help their brands be found, be heard and be profitable. Partnering with HootSuite brings increased support for businesses and their teams using social media to reach their ideal clients.

“Companies are taking advantage of being able to reach and engage with their ideal client right where they are. In this smart-device driven society, social networks are the new meeting places to exchange ideas, share stories and connect with the things that are important to us. Marketing to those clients online, especially through social media, is a critical part of an overall marketing strategy” said Frederika Angus, CEO of NextLevelVision.com. “HootSuite is a leader in social media management systems that scales from solo small business owners to large, multi-department companies. Our clients demand strong platforms to support their social media campaigns and we are pleased to be HootSuite Certified Professionals to serve our clients.”

Frederika Angus is a strong proponent of Digital Marketing and creates, manages and executes projects that help businesses get in front of their ideal clients, increase website traffic and sell products and services. Her solution offerings including, website design, social media branding and management, blog content management, keyword research for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, aid her clients in attracting the right customers, right in time.

NextLevelVision.com has built a social media marketing process by using the HootSuite concepts of Engage, Collaborate, Analyze and Secure:

Engage: Optimize your audience engagement by creating search streams, scheduling messages and monitoring all of your social network profiles from one customizable web and mobile dashboard.

Collaborate: Invite clients and colleagues to participate in your social media management. Assign messages for follow up and share streams, helping you increase efficiency.

Analyze: Measure your efforts using over 40 social analytics modules to build and share custom reports. Or select from one of our pre-made templates for quick and easy reporting.

Secure: Share access with team members without compromising security. The team permission levels and advanced sharing options ensure you remain in control of your valuable social profiles and accounts.

Frederika Angus currently has a special offer for HootSuite Pro – Sign up for a 30-day free trial of HootSuite Pro now http://bit.ly/HootSuiteProFree

5 Internet Marketing Tips for Local Businesses

5 Internet Marketing Tips for Local Businesses

by Frederika Angus

Local business marketing online

As a local business you have a great opportunity using internet marketing and social media. Your small business is able to use the internet and social media to be found, strengthen your brand, connect with your current and potential patrons and also boost your SEO ranking. Establishing and expanding your reach online is important in today’s instant access to information, smartphone society. Online marketing keeps your brand’s name at the top of your customers’ mind when they need your products or services.

Here are 5 tips to help your local business get results and see the benefits from your online presence.

1. Use WordPress as your website platform to blog weekly. WordPress plays so beautifully with search engines such as Google. When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), this helps to pull your website up on to the first page of results because it sees your consistent new blog info. There are also a couple really great SEO plugins that make adding your keywords so easy throughout the entire site.

2. Name the URL of your posts and pages with your local area city and one main keyword phrase. If you are an italian restaurant in Dallas, TX (using WordPress as your platform), you can easily add italian-restaurant-dallas-texas to the URL text. When customers are looking for a great italian dinner in Dallas, your website will begin to be shown to them. Simple boost to website traffic and eyes on your business!

3. Establish a Google+ page in the local category. Google is the top search engine used on daily basis. Users are able to discover the new Google+ Local pages in several ways: through a search on Google.com or Google Maps, in mobile apps or through a search on Google+.

4. Create and use Facebook and Twitter daily. For many, social media is the first thing they check in the morning when they awaken and the last thing they read at night. Be sure your local business has a dedicated Facebook like page (Read more on why you shouldn’t use a Facebook profile page) and Twitter page. Post updates regularly throughout the day to connect with you customers.

5. Share your brand visually. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Share behind the scenes photos in your office, marketing and promotional images, employees of the month, store front specials and decor. People will begin to feel like part of the culture of your business and this helps you build trust and credibility for your brand.

Have these tips helped you? Be sure to leave me a comment below!

Talk to you soon!

Frederika Angus

Facebook Announces News Feed Updates; How Your Brand and Business Can Get Ready And Not Be Left Behind

Facebook Announces News Feed Updates; How Your Brand and Business Can Get Ready And Not Be Left Behind

by Frederika Angus

A day after Google announced larger Cover Images for their Google+ social media platform, Facebook announced their News Feed updates. It will take some time to understand the full impact for businesses and brands on their social media marketing plan. Based on the changes Facebook is preparing to roll out, there are a few things that your business can do to be ahead of the curve and get ready now.

1. Greater control of what users see in their feeds with the use of “sub-feeds.” Now businesses have the opportunity to show up in multiple ways in front of their ideal clients. Your page will still show up under News Feed and Most Recent as it always has. When users want to view all of the pages they follow in one place, all of your content will be consolidated along side the other pages and people they follow under the Following sub-feed.

The fun update is that every picture you share will be seen with pictures from their friends in the Photos feed. This is your opportunity to make sure that all your marketing and content is not just text updates or sharing links. Include visual updates in your plan and you’ll have an opportunity for brand recognition, marketing and free advertising.

facebook-sub-feeds-news-feed

2. The news feed will be come a much cleaner, less cluttered place to be. As you can see from the picture below, images and videos become larger. According to Facebook about 50% of news feed updates are visual.

What does this mean to your business?

Now is the time to ensure that you focus on larger images of high-quality. Facebook is listening to what the advertisers/marketers and brands have requested. Larger images give you more advertising space for your promoted posts, like page campaigns, in the Photo sub-feed, and more! As you’re using your Facebook ads to target your ideal clients, the quality of your images will give an immediate impression about your brand. 

Facebook reveals news feed update

 

3. Cover photos will become more important with Facebook’s changes. When someone “likes” a business or brand the lower half of the cover photo appears in the News Feed and can now be seen by that person’s friends.

Did you catch that? Before these changes Facebook would only show a small thumbnail sized fan page’s profile picture. Most businesses used that to display a logo. Now your business has the opportunity for FREE marketing space with every like your page receives.

According to Facebook, “Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page’s story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories.”

Begin thinking now about what will catch your customer’s eye? How can we use our cover image to cause my follower’s friends to click, discover and connect with our page as well?

This is not the time to throw only a logo, pure text, or a generic stock background picture of the sky. This is your opportunity to create your own business buzz, engage, be creative and really showcase your brand.

Facebook cover images more important for brands

 

Ready to dive right ahead of the crowd? I have you covered.

Let’s create your brand a new look now with this limited time special offer!

Talk to you soon!

Frederika Angus

The Social Effect on Marketing: Lessons From the SuperBowl For Small Business Owners

The Social Effect on Marketing: Lessons From the SuperBowl For Small Business Owners

by Frederika Angus

sm-football

Our house is the party place for any big event. Sporting events, holidays, and every weekend during cookout season, we find ourselves gathered with family and friends and a kitchen full of food. This year’s SuperBowl was no different. Throughout the entire game, even though we were sitting in the same room, we would yell out updates from social media, pass our phones around to show the funniest pictures and Tweet and Facebook the experience we were having. Even though my team didn’t win, all we could talk about by the end of the night were the commercials, who had the best and most memorable marketing, and those brands that didn’t make a favorable impression.

There are three lessons you can take from the brands that advertised during the big game to use in your own small business.

1. Give people a way to act or a call-to-action.  Every commercial gave the viewers a way to interact with a call to action that lead them to social media. To further increase the engagement nearly every brand used a hashtag.

2. Use multi-point interaction for your own live events, conferences, magazine ads and direct mailing. Think of ways to include multiple points of interaction with your customers through contests, or polls being run on the social media platforms.

3. Brands represented with a person over a product are more memorable. Advertising focused solely on the features of their product didn’t make a splash on the social media radar. People prefer to interact with a persona over a logo or a product box. Using your picture in advertising will create a more memorable experience for you customers.

Here are a few articles for you to read about the impact of social media and the SuperBowl Ads.

Social Media Lessons From the SuperBowl Ads

Forbes contributor, Haydn Shaughnessy shares the benefit in being able to respond realtime to marketing efforts via social media. The brands which react the best and fastest will be able to out perform those with the same static message. Brands emphasized Twitter in marketing efforts with use of hashtags.

Oreo Super Bowl Spot Attracts Thousands of Instagram Followers

3-second call-to-action at the end of Oreo’s Super Bowl commercial, which debuted during the game Sunday, has increased Oreo’s Instagram following by tens of thousands.

9 Brands That Thought Fast on Social Media During the Super Bowl

The unexpected power outage caused brands to enhance the likeability of their brand through quick wit. They immediate began using social media advertising by bidding on keywords being used like power outage.

How Oreo Culture-Jacked The Super Bowl

Oreo had a team in place in a social media war room to react quickly. Being able to produce content within minutes caused their image to be retweeted, or shared, more than 14,500 times on Twitter.

What one take away do you have from the usage of social media during the Super Bowl? Share it with me below!

Talk to you soon!

Frederika Angus

Get Social Media Ready for the Holidays!

Get Social Media Ready for the Holidays!

It’s crunch time as you get ready for the Holidays. It’s less than two weeks out for the greatest shopping of the year. I’ve already seen several leaked ads and consumers are putting their plans in place to navigate their way to the best deals! The energy in the air is changing and the credit cards that have been under tight lock and key are beginning to burn a hole in the pocket of even the most frugal of shoppers.

During the time between Black Friday and Cyber Monday (with Small Business Saturday in between), online businesses can meet or exceed in sales what they have been able to do all year. Everyone is in the mood to spread cheer and give gifts. It is the perfect time to celebrate your loyal clients and even expose your brand to new customers.

I bet you’ve been busy for months with your spectacular Black Friday sale. There is a lot of work that goes into preparing your bonus audios, videos and eBooks, setting up your shopping cart with coupon codes, updating your website, notifying your web host of the increase in volume and gearing up your client care staff for the increases in volume. As you are working hard with your head down, you may also be wondering how you will handle enjoying the holiday season with your family, traveling to be with friends, and successfully manage all the increased activity that your own social media profiles will see.

I’ve come up with a solution so that you can enjoy the holidays without the stress and still serve and support your customers via your social media profiles at the same. We’ve prepared not one but TWO Pre-Black Friday specials  to come along side of all your hard work and help you maintain your engagement and also promote your own Black Friday sales, bonuses and specials using social media.

If you’ve never worked with a social media content manager, this is a great opportunity to see if this will work for you on a short-term basis at a price that has NEVER been offered before and quite honestly will never be offered again.

Get access to our Pre-Black Friday specials now!

Talk to you soon!

 

Six Important Reasons Your Business Should Use a Facebook Fan or Like Page

Six Important Reasons Your Business Should Use a Facebook Fan or Like Page

by Frederika Angus

http://www.facebook.com/FrederikaAngusBiz

I get some really awesome questions about how to use social media as a business in the most productive and profitable way. Honestly, some lessons I’ve had to learn through trial and error. When I first started business activity on Facebook a couple years ago, I was in a direct sales organization. I’d already been on Facebook personally for years. I’d seen friends post their business links and websites in every other post to motivate people to “buy their stuff.” Although I had never actually seen any success with that method (big clue), I tried it too. That lasted about 2 days. It just didn’t feel right to me to spam my friends, family and acquaintances with my business stuff.

As I began to better understand the correct way to build a brand and be social with social media, I started a business fan page, also known as a like page. This requires people to actually like your business and want to receive updates from you. This is greatest business invention ever! You’re actually able to talk to the people that want to learn more about your products and services.

Here are 6 important reasons to use a Facebook Business Page (also known as like or fan pages) for your business activities.

1. Facebook frowns upon business activity on your personal profile timeline.

Facebook’s official stance is as follows:

Timelines are for personal, non-commercial use only. They represent individuals and must be held under an individual name. Pages are for professional or official use, and allow an organization, business, celebrity or band to maintain a presence on Facebook. You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.

This means if you are currently using a personal timeline to promote, and perform business activities, you are in violation of the Facebook Terms of Service, and could have your account completely shutdown.

2. Data, data, and more data

With over a decade of experience in project management, I have learned, If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it! Using a Facebook Page opens up a whole new level of reporting and statistics that personal timeline profiles do not have. Using the insights provided by Facebook, you can determine, what content your ideal customers like, how many of the people who like your page are actually seeing your content and how far your reach is beyond those that like your page. This allows you to stop guessing who your target demographic might be, where they are located and even their age!

3. Branding

Fan pages offer a great opportunity to provide a customized look with the large cover image, the ability to add and customize apps and utilize your logo, if you have one for brand recognition. Bringing the same styling to the graphics you use across your online presence is made easier with a Fan page.

4. Unlimited Fans

Personal profiles have a 5000 friend limit. Fan pages allow for a limitless amount of people. The choice here is simple. You want as many of your ideal customers to be able to interact and obtain your updates as possible.

5. Google and Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

This is one of my favorites. Did you know that Google searches Fan Pages and indexes the information? So as people are doing searches on information and keywords that relate to your business, your fan page could be included in the information! Facebook is the 2nd ranked website in the United States with Google as number one! The personal profiles do not get the same google ranking effect. Facebook Fan pages should absolutely be a part of your SEO strategy.

6. Advertising opportunities

You’re a business owner so marketing should be a big part of your business. Facebook allows for some ridiculously affordable, highly targeted marketing. Remember there are over a billion users on Facebook. While all 1 billion of them are not likely to be your ideal customer, you can certainly find a subset to market yourself to. In addition to the advertising, there is the option to promote posts to reach the fans of your page and their friends. Getting your business in front the right people has just gotten easier!

Have you had reservations about switching from using a personal profile to using a Fan page?

Let me know in the comments below if this has helped you make a well-informed and wise change!

Talk to you soon!