Social media is constantly changing- and it can be hard to keep up. So how can you stay on top of the constant changes and keep your brand ahead of the game on your organic socials?
Allow us to help you with that… 🚀
Here’s 3 ways to keep up with ongoing social media changes, updates and trends. By incorporating these into your marketing strategy, you’ll ensure you stay ahead of the game and respond quickly to platform changes and current trends.
1. Use hashtags
Follow social media-related hashtags on Twitter to see the latest news for different platforms (eg #socialmedia, #instagram, #tiktok etc). Twitter is a great place to find quick updates, tips and tricks for achieving success on your Instagram page or TikTok content.
2. Inbox those insights
Subscribe to marketing newsletters for all the latest updates and conversations happening in real time : eg. Mashable, DTC, Marketing Week, Social Media Today, Later – the list goes on.
They’ll get sent straight to your inbox, and you can designate time each week to go through them and keep up to date.
3. Be alerted on trends
Set up daily Google Alerts for key topics and trends so you’ll be notified when they’re mentioned in the news and online conversations.
These can be social media-related, as well as linked to your brand’s industry and customer interests.
Set them to once a week so your inbox isn’t overloaded! You can also select the content type and region to narrow down your alerts.
That’s all folks – we hope these 3 quick tips help you fire up your social media strategy.
If you’re not sure where to start – or your organic socials need an extra helping hand – we’re here to help. Get in touch with our team today to talk strategy and goals 🚀
Read on to find out how a marketing growth partner could help your brand reach new heights this Q4.
The busiest time of the marketing calendar year is coming up – the run up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s a whole host of marketing activities to do to ensure this period is a successful one for your business.
If you’re unsure of where to start, it’s worth investing in a team of marketing experts to get your brand out there, ready for Black Friday.
Sometimes a helping hand can work wonders for your online reach and brand awareness, especially if you need time to clue up on the world of social media marketing, paid social advertising, or email marketing, before you can get stuck in to strategy and content creation.
It’s more important than ever to establish an online presence for your brand, to get your message out there and reach your target audience. And there’s experts out there who can jump straight onboard and help you achieve your goals.
Like us, for example (!).
What’s a growth partner?
Unlike an agency, we don’t consider ourselves an ‘external source’ for marketing services. We’re a dedicated partner to your brand, working with you, not external to you, to achieve success.
By collaborating with you and your goals, we’ll draw from our experience of scaling brands to help you grow and achieve your vision. Our success truly is your success – that’s what a partnership with us means.
We’re here to work together, as an extension of your business, to strive for your growth. We constantly innovate, testing new ideas and optimising the tests that work.
Call us your fully-functioning marketing department. We completely integrate with the way your business works, instead of operating from the sidelines.
You can leave it to us to fire up your marketing strategy, clued up on all the industry knowledge and expertise that will help you get the results you’re looking for.
How we can help
Let’s break down the variety of services you might consider for Black Friday :
Paid Social Ads –
Reach new and retargeted audiences and optimise your success on the daily. By the time Black Friday rolls around, we’ll have a good idea of the type of copy and content that stops scrolls and gets clicks.
Paid Google Ads –
Build your brand awareness and boost website traffic with paid search. Make it easier for your customers to find your brand when they search for the products you sell.
Email Marketing –
Nurture a loyal customer base with email campaigns that engage, reward and bring value. Make sure your customers remember your offers and discounts when Black Friday arrives.
Social Media Marketing –
Take your social media output to the next level with content that gets you noticed and trusted- from Instagram to TikTok. Build your brand awareness and engage your audience with dynamic video, imagery and graphics that creatively capitalise on trends.
Brand Management –
Elevate your brand identity and build your customer base with a recognisable tone of voice, visual branding and messaging across your marketing channels. As it’s not just about short-term efforts to get conversions, but long-term trust-building.
How does a growth partnership work?
When you get started on your onboarding, we’ll get stuck into getting to know your brand, inside out. We’re talking competitor research, TOV research, and full audits across your ad accounts and content output.
We’ll get to know your brand culture, what’s important to you, and what you’re determined to achieve in both the near and distant future. Then you can be sure your new growth partner is fully onboard with your brand and can create the kind of content you’d love to see.
In the weeks leading up to Black Friday, we’ll be testing what works best, so we’re ready to build on this when it counts the most.
What are my next steps?
Why not get in touch and find out more about how we can help your brand this quarter?
We’re an innovative, creative and ambitious growth partner, ready to help you scale up 🚀
Want to start creating engaging email campaigns, but not sure where to start? You’ve come to the right place 🙌
In this article, we’ll show you how to create email campaigns that stand out in your audience’s inboxes – and ultimately, get clicks and conversions.
In the run up to Black Friday, email marketing is an important channel to be investing time in to elevate your sales.
No matter the email marketing platform you use, professionally-created email campaigns are a great way to creatively advertise your products with an audience that’s already invested in your business, and nurture strong customer relationships with a clear brand identity.
How can you ensure your emails stand out from the rest?
Building a strong campaign
So, what are the key elements you need to be paying attention to?
1. Subject line (/preview line)
This is the first thing your audience will see from your campaign, and it’s vital you ensure it entices your audience to click on the email and view it- so make it count!
Here’s some examples of email subject lines – which ones stand out from the rest?
Consider what would attract your audience’s attention as they scroll through their inbox and see your brand’s email. Have you got any promotions running? If so, include how much your products currently cost (for a limited time only!), or how much they could save.
Alternatively, use a powerful CTA to compel your audience to click – this could evoke a sense of ‘fear of missing out’ if they don’t click, eg:
Subject lines that create a sudden surge of interest, but don’t disclose all information unless the recipient clicks to read it, is a great way to raise your open rate.
Your email’s copy is the perfect place to communicate your brand’s personality and encourage conversions in a creative way.
Keep copy punchy and easy to read, to communicate your message in an engaging way.
An example of simple, punchy copy from H&M’s email marketing – smoothly leading to a CTA.
Bear in mind that most recipients will be checking their inboxes on their phones – ensure you get to the point in a few lines to sustain their interest.
Draw attention to any offers or discounts with bold text that the audience will see in an instant.
Include link buttons with CTAs to take them to relevant product page- these can appear more than once if your email is longer, to ensure your audience always has an opportunity to click and visit your site.
3. Imagery and graphics
Great, memorable emails include attractive graphics with eye-catching headlines, that show off featured products in their best light.
Even just a simple image and headline, like Schuh’s here, is a great way to communicate your brand identity and create an engaging send.
Aim to keep your recipients scrolling through your email without getting disengaged and clicking away. This might mean summing up copy in an easily-digestible infographic if you wish to communicate more information (eg a list of USPs).
Your audiences are unlikely to stick around and read large chunks of text. Break them up with professional imagery, text-based graphics and links, to keep your campaign engaging.
If you’ve got a larger product offering, it might be worth creating a product catalogue at the end of each send – so recipients can easily see your new/bestselling product lines.
Here’s an example of a simple product catalogue by Monki, which allows recipients to browse a portion of the product offering before clicking to view the site.
To make your sends more dynamic, consider creating GIFs that flicks between images, or simple animated graphics featuring moving objects.
These may take more time to create, but they could be a great way to elevate your campaigns and engage your audience.
Now we’ve gone through the essential elements you need for a good campaign – how can you get started on your email planning?
It’s definitely advisable to plan your email calendar in advance- for example, planning the month ahead each month, or even the next few months.
Campaign planning
Now Black Friday’s coming up, it’s more important than ever to plan ahead to achieve a higher volume of sales. Email marketing is one key factor in the effort to engage customers and boost your conversions.
Decide how many campaigns you’d like to send out each week, and what you’ll include in each of them. If you’re building a business, we’d suggest at least 2 a week to gain an inbox presence.
As part of the planning process, visualise what you want your emails’ layouts to look like, and what content you’d like to include.
We’d advise splitting your sends between sales-focussed campaigns and community-building campaigns.
With the latter, prepare short blog-style articles that would interest your audience – whether that’s telling your brand story, discussing a subject of interest to your niche, or giving product-based advice.
This is a great way to add value to your subscribers’ experience with your brand – making them more likely to purchase from you down the line.
For the remainder of your sends, focus on your products’ USPs (unique selling points) and features, and utilise persuasive, creative language to drive clicks and conversions on your site.
But when should you send emails for the highest click and conversion rates? Let’s find out…
Optimising your campaigns
By scheduling sends in advance, you can ensure you send out emails when your audience is most likely to open them, and buy from you.
Consider your target audience’s lifestyles and habits – when are they going to be checking their inboxes, their phones, or working on their laptop?
Target their lunch break, commute and after-work leisure time during the working week. Evenings are a particularly golden time for online purchases; your audience is often scrolling through their phone and catching up with their notifications after a busy day.
With blog-style campaigns, consider when recipients will more likely commit to reading your content. Perhaps steer clear from later on in the evening, to avoid tired brains that don’t wish to commit to a longer read!
As you begin sending out campaigns, you can start paying attention to the analytics- when are more customers opening, clicking, converting from your campaigns?
Send campaigns again at high-performing times for your audience, and test new times to see what the stats are like.
Keep an eye on your CVR (conversation rate), open rate, click rate and recipient activity (What are they clicking on? What are they responding well to?)
We hope this helps as you begin your email marketing journey! 💪
If you’re creating paid Facebook ads or planning to test on the platform, it’s crucial to ensure your ads will succeed in capturing the attention of your audience.
Picture this – your target audience is scrolling through Facebook and browsing their feed. Your ads need to stand out – so eye-catching creatives and copy are the way to go.
To use the platform to your advantage, it’s important to always consider this audience and how you can quickly gain their attention as they scroll.
We’ve pulled together 5 ways to make sure your ads are more likely to deliver on clicks and conversions on Facebook :
1- Use attention-grabbing creatives
Depending on your brand image and style, prepare graphics that showcase your products in the best light possible.
Create graphics that are engaging to look at, pull in attention and quickly give your audience all the key information they need to know. That might be USPS, product features or ratings.
Whether it’s raw imagery or lifestyle imagery, your ad creatives should convey your brand personality and grow your audience’s interest.
Just be sure to avoid adding too much text – ‘busy’ graphics can cause information overload and prompt Facebook users to keep on scrolling past.
Keep things simple- your audience can find out more about your product offering on your site.
2- Craft up short headlines
A great way to communicate your brand identity and assert your product as a key market contender, as well as pause a Facebook user’s scroll, is to include an eye-catching headline within your graphic.
These could be a short phrase about a featured product/collection or a punchy customer review that creates a strong first impression.
Consider the reading experience here if there’s more than one section of text overlay. The viewer is more likely to begin at the top left and work across/down, so make sure they read the most important message first.
3- Test short, punchy captions
Captions appear above your ad creative on Facebook – but it’s likely your audience will view your eye-catching creative first.
Your caption provides further, and sometimes more detailed, information about your range, or a bestselling/new product featured in your ad.
It’s tempting to give your audience everything they need to know here – but it’s best to be selective. Communicate those key USPs/features, describe your product in a sentence or two- then entice the audience to visit the site to find out more/make a purchase.
Don’t write a lengthy paragraph for your caption – on first impression, these are rather overwhelming sights. Consider the experience of your audience and keep captions punchy and easily digestible.
Whether you break captions down into many lines or stick to one short section, they’re more likely to be read if they seem easy to read on first glance.
4- Add emoji in captions
If including a few emoji would match your brand identity and the personality you wish to convey in ads, then this is a great practice for drawing eyes to your captions.
Emoji are colourful, expressive and can communicate key messages in one simple image. Whether you prefer facial expressions, objects or emoji that encourage actions (like arrows, shopping carts or timers), add a few to your captions to aid the reading experience.
Just be careful not to overdo it – more than 3 or 4 different emoji can make your ads appear ‘shouty’ and communicate the wrong message.
Emoji like 🔥, ⚡️, 👀 and 💥 are popular choices for attracting attention and building hype, as are expressions like 😍, 🤩 and 😱.
Alternatively, choose emoji that tie in with your product offering and represent your brand identity. For example, if you’re selling natural produce, using emoji like 🌿, 🌱 and 💚 can communicate this characteristic in an instant.
5- Try video content
We’re seeing the growing use of video content on Facebook ads, as a more dynamic option than imagery. This could be a short animated GIF, or TikTok-style UGC showing your product in use.
With video content, you’re able to communicate more about your product offering without overwhelming your audience. With shorter attention spans, your audience will often respond well to video content that shows your brand personality.
Why not vary up your content in ad testing with video and imagery?
If you’re needing some assistance with implementing and testing your ads for maximised results, our marketing specialists are here to help.
With weekly testing of new content, plus expert insights on all things paid social, you’ve come to the right place for Facebook ad creation.
Is Instagram turning into TikTok? Here’s what’s changed on the platform – with a Kardashian-approved petition attempting to stop the transformation.
Instagram has been the subject of multiple changes over the past few months – but the latest overhaul has some calling the platform a ‘TikTok wannabe’. Some Instagram users have witnessed a significant change on their feed design, as the platform tests a more ‘immersive’ experience in which videos (Reels) are given more space on the feed.
For these users, posts take up a larger space on the screen and the background has changed to black. In other words, it’s seemed to turn into a TikTok-esque, ‘For You Page’ format.
How the Instagram feed appears to those with the new update – looking increasingly similar to the TikTok ‘For You Page’.
Even if you haven’t received the full update, you’ll notice that short-form videos are given significant priority over photo-based posts, and posts from ‘suggested accounts’ continually appear on your feed. The algorithm now seems to be finding creators and accounts that match users’ interests and viewing history, and placing them higher on the feed than users’ own friends’ posts.
How the feed appears before the newest update – with accounts being ‘suggested’ to you according to your topics of interest.
It means that the Instagram experience is changing into a place of discovery rather than connection with friends and family- just like TikTok. This video-sharing app was primarily made for entertainment purposes and sharing dynamic content – and Instagram quickly caught on with the highly-shared video content, creating Reels in August 2020.
Yet it seems that now, the video/image scales have been tipped slightly too far than Instagram users are comfortable with. While it’s true that short-form video content is highly shareable and engaging, and it’s understandable that Instagram has capitalised on this to optimise the user experience – it’s important that the platform keeps its original essence.
Instagram was created in 2010 as a photo-sharing app, inspired by founder Kevin Systrom’s passion for photography. And its users’ love of creating and sharing a personal photo album with their nearest and dearest has never wavered, even in the face of change.
A step back in time: how Instagram used to look in 2014 – with a complete focus on users’ photos.
This is the sentiment behind the now-viral petition sweeping across the internet, calling to “Make Instagram Instagram again” and for the platform to “stop trying to be TikTok”. Created by Tati Bruening, the petition suggests bringing focus back to photos (not solely on video content) and re-introducing the chronological timeline that showed us our friends and family’s posts in real time.
Tati Bruening’s now-viral petition calling for the revival of the old Instagram platform.
Created only 3 days ago, this Change.org petition has now, rather incredibly, received over 134K signatures (at the time of publication) – if it reaches 150K it will be one of the top-signed petitions on the site. Notable signees include the influential queens of Instagram themselves, Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian, who have added their voices to the ring and shared the petition on their Instagram Stories.
With high-flying influencers and creators also speaking up on the changes, it’s hoped that those behind the platform will listen to what the people seem to want. Which is: retain the original purpose of the app, alongside its move to include video-based content.
This wave of mutual dissent over Instagram’s update isn’t about rejecting change. It’s about supporting the platform’s originality and preserving the reason it was created. Updates like Instagram Stories and the ‘Favourites’ filtered feed have been warmly received by users – but this feed overhaul seems to many like a step too far.
A recent addition to the platform is the ‘Favourites’ feed, which allows users to create a feed full of their favourite accounts and creators.
While we wait and see what becomes of this collective call for change (or rather, the retracing of steps), it’s important to stay on top of these fast-changing platforms and use popular features to your advantage.
If video-based content is pushed more than photo-based posts by the Instagram algorithm, it’s vital to reflect this in your social media strategy, or you risk a low reach and an even lower engagement. It’s important to be flexible and responsive to change in this landscape – despite your personal preference – so you get the recognition and reach you’re looking for.
If you need help with keeping up with social media updates and staying ahead of the curve, get in touch with us today. We’re a team of digital marketing experts ready to help you take your brand to the next level – book a call with us now to discuss your strategy and goals 🚀
