Social Media Marketing

Gifs, whats all the fuss about?

A graphic interchange format, better known as a gif are awesome tools for content marketers and regular people alike and there's a lot of fuss around them at the moment in the social marketing world due to twitter enabling them on 18th June, first of let me answer a few FAQs from clients and people who may just not be in the know.

What is a gif?

A gif is a selection of images relayed back to back to play a little video, at a lower frame speed than traditional video and without any audio. They look like this;

Maybe a poor choice of Gif to use, but well everyone loves Adam Sandler so its cool I guess.

The next thing to address is why should we use them now that they're available?

Well if we say a picture is worth a thousand words, then a gif of 10 images is worth 10,000 words, and in a world of content marketing that limits you to 140 characters, a 10,000 word gif is like striking oil, if used in the right context. They can take your average post to an awesome post and drive engagement through the roof as they're really just quite relatable. Personally, I prefer a gif to a vine as you can source them more easily and have less chance of embarrassing yourself!

How do I upload a gif?

Well it couldn't be easier, simply post the gif in the same way that you'd post an image, then twitter does the rest!

Where do I find a gif?

Personally my favourite site is giphy.com/ Its really easy to use and you can search pretty much anything and it'll generate a gif for you.

Here are some other options if you don't like this site

www.reddit.com/r/gifs/
www.reactiongifs.com/
9gag.com/gif
www.gifs.net/

Or if you'd like to generate your own, you can here:

But most of all, just have fun with them and see what you can do, they really are quite cool if you get them right!

Thanks for reading!

Jordan Mason
The Social Evolution
www.thesocialevolution.co.uk
www.twitter.com/thesocialev
www.facebook.com/socialevolutionmedia

Facebook vs Twitter - The organic fight

I’ll try and keep this pretty simple and fast.

Facebook have screwed up, in terms of their algorithm and killing off organic reach in favour of paid promotion they’ve alienated 98% of the market who simply don’t have a budget for social, nor do they really want to invest in it unless they can naturally (for free) see results on their networks by giving it a go themselves. So unless you’re looking to market your page in paid promotion of facebook and you have an established liker base already who’re interactive, you’re gonna have a bad time and be investing heavily for not a lot of result.

These are the figures

6% of likers are reached organically
49% was peak organic reach in October 2013
Organic reach to hit 0% by 2014 end
89% reach – paid campaign

Now twitter conversely, organic exposure you can “follow” 2000 accounts without any limitation, then thereafter a maximum of 1000 users per day as long as your ratio is strong. You can also tailor this to be in touch with your target demographic and get an audience base who are more responsive, reactive and engaging than that on facebook. As well as being able to access individual tweets, search keywords and have your own input on people’s conversations. It really is that easy.

But personally between the two, the limitations set in place by Facebook’s algorithms outweigh the obvious time implications that could be caused as a result of twitter engagement being so high, but if you want to generate new business, time is irrelevant. So you choose, facebook or twitter? Personally I’d choose twitter every time.

Any questions or queries feel free to tweet us ;) @thesocialev

Jordan Mason

Managing Director

The Social Evolution

www.thesocialevolution.co.uk

Using staff & friends to create a network of 1million+

Want to create a network of 1million people but don’t know how? Utilise your staff and close friend network to grow your pages exponentially.

Each adult user on facebook has 338 friends on average, so lets do some maths.

Say you have a mid-size company of 249 employees, this creates an in house network of 249x338 = 84,162 people

Then factor in your close group of family and friends, getting them to share, like and comment on your posts, say 30 people, this gives a total reach just from your close network of 10,140 people

So there you have a network of 100,000 people at your disposal.

This works because each post on social media shows on the newsfeed of every person who’s linked to that page, so getting your friends and colleagues to like a page and engage with posts shows up on all their friends news feeds and so on and so forth, with shares getting the highest quantity of reach as it appears centrally on the news feed.

From there, if you can generate high quality content, you can bank on more interactions and engagements, generating higher exposure.

This can be applied across all social networks, it works especially well on twitter where retweets are fast and effective, having breadth of a page and higher interactions per user.

Its very simple, and can even be written into social media policy, staff handbooks and contracts etc that it is required to interact on every post that the company publishes. No one really checks who likes the posts, but what you want is reach and engagement, and this gives you just that. Your own viral army.

Use it carefully!

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Social media stats

This blog has been written to briefly outline some statistics regarding social media;

In particular Facebook has looked to increase its exposure in expanding markets, focusing less on western economies, with an increase of 153 million users in the last year in Brazil, Japan, India, Russia and South Korea alone. Up 91% on 2012.

Average time spent per user is hard to quantify, as Facebook counts time spent per user when applications are left open, where-as the rest quantify active engagement, hence the extremely large number!

In terms of marketing.....

Facebook's market value of $173 billion is equal to 144 times its 1.2 billion monthly active users. This means each user is worth $144 to Facebook!

Facebook is the king, it has the largest impact on consumers purchasing behavior with a vast 47% of social media users telling interviewers that it does influence their purchase decisions.

People aged 45 – 54 are the fastest growing sector of Social Media. These are the CEO’s, Senior Managers and high-level executives that you need to be putting yourself in-front of.

Users that follow companies on social media have increased by 106% in the last few years!

Social networks have been around for over 10 years now, they're not going anywhere soon, these are just a brief oversight of the value of social networks and how they correspond with our everyday lives. The trends are only set to continue and as such it makes perfect sense to market business to these expanding readily available demographics.

I hope you found this interesting, it came as a shock to myself!

Jordan Mason

www.thesocialevolution.co.uk
www.twitter.com/thesocialev
www.facebook.com/socialevolutionmedia

Pay Per Click Promotion

Pay per click promotion has been used as a tool for search engines and websites to gain revenue through advertisement streams, now this has become less-elite and more widespread through the cheaper (in comparison to google) pay per click services available on the market.

Facebook averages at around 2p per click, which when compared to Google (50 cents per click) is a landfall saving. Especially when Facebook users constitute 40 million active users in the UK alone.

Now if you are paramount on investing in pay per click, there are some base features that must be considered when creating content and posting your advertisement;

The first consideration when considering any pay per click scheme is initially what do you want to get from it, this factor will then get the ball rolling with all other factors.

When you've decided what you want from your promotion, be it exposure, engagement, leads, retention etc. You then must decide who you want to see the post. The target audience. Software tools within mediums now allow you to key in the demographic that you'd like to reach, which makes it very simple to hit your target audience, down to their job title if you really want to get that specific in the case of Linkedin.

Content is king, never forget that. Unless you have relevant, scalable, quantifiable and relatable content, your investment is invalid. You need the content existing on your sites as all networks now have progressive algorithms. The more content you push out. The more they have to work on to get your paid posts to the audience most applicable to it, which is what really gets you the return on investment. This is the same reason that google adwords have lesser effect. Everyone, beginning with google and now across the market now have progressive algorithms that pick up content rather than solely relying upon investment. Ask expedia! They lost 25% of search engine visibility when the algorithm changed due to paid promotions and lack of content. For this reason SEO is on the decline, and anyone that really advises differently is actually just trying to steal your money. (Excuse me for being opinionated, its my job). Because of this, it is integral that you publish content of high quality, in order to be found, regardless of investment.

Base organic exposure is crucial! If you already have traffic going to your sites. That is fantastic! It allows you to get an organic reach, proper engagement, so that when you do invest in paid promotion, the effects are enhanced going to a much wider market. Facebook outlines this very well. Using the insights tool, it tracks your key demographic, ie the most users regularly engaging with your page, promotes to them first, then your other demographics, with the hope of gaining traction. Facebook also inserts into the feeds of wider audiences, but you really need the engagement to be able to get real traction. They love to hit you with figures of "paid reach 120,000" but then you look back and see that you have 6 likes on the post. Whats the point? This again goes back into the content aspect. You can pump as much capital investment in as you'd like. But without the content there or the base exposure and engagement, you will not get traction.

Testing is paramount with paid promotion, especially when you are willing to invest a lot into it, for this reason, there is a strategised format to all testing for paid promotions that we use, this is;

Impressions
Cost per click
Click through rate
Conversions

You also then take the test from the lowest traffic source (bing) at lower scale as the cost is lower to see the effectiveness, bing also uses the same algorithm as google, so whatever works on bing will work in google, then transfer across to the more expensive, higher traffic sites as to increase exposure and get the return on your investment.

Once you've done all of the above, getting high quality content, organic exposure, engagement, targetting, testing and finally actually investing, putting the promotion into place, you are ready to publish and see the result.

I hope this helps with a short oversight into the world of paid promotion, if you have any queries, don't hesitate to contact me (my staff) and they'll be more than happy to advise you.

Thanks for reading

Jordan Mason

CEO

The Social Evolution

www.thesocialevolution.co.uk

www.twitter.com/Thesocialev

www.facebook.com/socialevolutionmedia

jordan@thesocialevolution.co.uk

What to look for when outsourcing social media

Many companies nowadays are ignorant when it comes to social media, they take the approach of "i just want to be on it" but not really have any input into the running of said sites, nor do they focus themselves on making these successful. So where am i going with this? Well, these people are exactly the type who outsource their social media to external agents to be run for them. We in the industry call this a management package. And in this article, i'll try and outline the benefits and drawbacks of such and attempt to give you an insight into the type of company you should be outsourcing to.

There are several different types of package that outsourcing companies offer. These can range from the most basic of packages to what companies including the likes of Vayner Media and my own company offer.

The first being your standard package which would include;

Number of posts per day
Set number of sites
Grow follower and fan base
Account creation

These can cost anything from the most basic at around £25/site/month up to around £1000/site/month at the top end of the spectrum, depending upon area and company.

Then you get the more advanced packages which include;

Content creation
Strategy
Marketing incorporation
Customer service application
As well as everything you'd find in a normal package
And so much more

The most expensive i've come across is $16,000/month, in Vayner Media, however they only deal with forbes 500 companies so that sort of limits their clientel. Similar packages are available from around £1000/month in the UK.

If i were a marketing director or CEO, there are a lot of things i'd be looking for in outsourcing my social media. Some of which are possible, some aren't. It all depends what you want from your social media, and how much you're willing to invest to get it.

What I as a business owner would be looking for when it comes down to outsourcing social media is;

How do they intend to know my company, keeping my social marketing strategy in-line with my marketing strategy, i.e. one full marketing package
Do they have a proven track record
Are they specialists in social media or classic marketing
How much is it going to cost me and what will i get for my money
Are they reactive and open to change

Ideally, what a social marketing agency will offer is all of the above. However very few do. My recommendation would be to shop around, find a company that is willing to invest time into your company and get to know you, so that they can provide a service suitable to you. Otherwise, your social output will fail. And your investment will be lost. However if done correctly the results can be outstanding through the right agents.

Good luck in choosing,

Jordan Mason

CEO & Co-founder

The Social Evolution

www.thesocialevolution.co.uk

www.twitter.com/thesocialev

ww.facebook.com/socialevolutionmedia

Customer Service Shocker

I'm making the point of this being another blog entirely from the same night in London with Danyl as to the extent of the customer services misdemeanour that reared its ugly head towards us.

Again writing this blog from my bed in the Grange Hotel, Tower Bridge. A beautiful hotel with luxury surroundings in the heart of central London. As you can imagine. Is not a particularly cheap place to stay. However, on our trip to this wonderful hotel, which i am so grateful to be able to stay at fairly regularly. I encountered an individual who's behaviour appalled me.

Lets set the scene,

I and Danyl return from our night out, really happy and looking to have one more drink before bed. So we entered the hotel to be greeted by front of house warmly, welcoming us back to the hotel. We then made our way to the bar which I managed to find out was open 24/7. The barman was so courteous and made every effort to continue our great night, can't be easy for him on his own at 4:30am, he served us our drinks, and began conversing with a couple whom were looking to order cocktails.

This is where the story turns into a shocker,

His colleague comes parading across the front of the bar, in full view of guests and tirades the member of staff. Undermining him explicitly and causing him deep distain at an instant in light of the four hotel guests sitting right in-front observing. Upon conclusion of their altercation, i then asked the barman for the name of the member of staff that had been condescending and rude towards him (which he was very reluctant to tell me), before approaching reception to file a complaint.

The duty manager dealt with me superbly and took my concern straight to the top of his list of priority, and went away to find the member of staff. However, when returning to my table to sit with my colleague, the member of staff in question once again rushed across the bar and belittled the bar-staff. In front of at this point 7 hotel guests. With no regard for anyone but himself.

I then went straight to the duty manager, informed him of the situations new development, and he pulled the staff member back.

The staff member then approached me and apologised sincerely for his actions but made claim that the necessity to file breakfast orders was too important. I did not agree and informed him how simple it could be, take the member of staff to one side, out of view of guests and politely request the duty. He then did not apologise to the member of staff he undermined and went back to his duties.

This for me was an example of excellent and poor customer service within one environment. It further drove home to me the need for leaders, not authoritarians within an organisation to ensure synergy. Something which i am keen to implement in my own company, offering innovation through customer service, equality between employees and respect of EVERYONE within a business hierarchy.Whether you be work experience, an apprentice or CEO, everyone should be able to go about their duties with dignity and respect towards one another.

Jordan Mason

CEO

The Social Evolution

www.thesocialevolution.co.uk

www.twitter.com/thesocialEV

www.facebook.com/socialevolutionmedia