Category Archives: Marketing

Social marketing searches for developing activities aimed to change marketing concepts of people’s behaviour for the benefit of individuals and communities for the greater social good.

How to Promote your Brand on Social Media?

In this digital age where social media is a big part of everyone’s life, the importance of social media marketing cannot be overestimated. Whether you are a personal brand or a business one, it’s critical that you leverage social networking platforms to promote yourself, your products, or your services.

They are proved to increase your brand awareness and generate revenue for you or your company. So outline your goals carefully now and enhance your brand’s social media presence to reap the many benefits available.

Below you can find some tips to help build and promote your brand on social media:

  • Choose the right platform

At first, you might be asking yourself which social media platform works best for you. To better find the answer, just check out on which platform your target audience, as well as your competitors, are the most active. The second parameter that you should consider when deciding on a platform is whether or not it is consistent with your purpose. For instance, if your field of activity is more visual, it’s better to pick Instagram or Pinterest. However, YouTube is the perfect choice for video-based activities, Facebook for community building, and LinkedIn for B2B lead generation and general networking.

It is recommended to focus your efforts on one single platform at the beginning and then gradually turn to other best-suited ones.

  • Write an appealing bio

The bio is the place where you can clearly define yourself. In fact, you showcase in it who you are, what your interests are, how you can help or which services you provide. An engaging bio can work wonders for you since you are making the first impression through it, so try not to make viewers bounce off your profile as quickly as they got there.

To make your brand’s bio shine, pay attention to the following points:

  • Choose a profile photo that is specific to you and can be used everywhere in online environments.
  • Highlight your achievements by using the best keywords, hashtags, or emojis if possible.
  • Put your contact details including your email address, phone number and your location.
  • Provide a short description about the nature of your brand.
  • Put the link to your website or other social media accounts to drive traffic and generate leads. To add multiple links to bio use iLink to convert them all into a single one. Entice people to click on your bio link by using it in your contents such as captions whenever it fits in.
  • Create great contents in a quality design

Make sure to achieve a good balance of promotional and interesting contents. Interesting contents are those shareable ones that inspire, educate or entertain your viewers.

Utilize branded hashtags as well as befitting and relevant ones to further increase your exposure and help your audience find you more easily. Try not to misuse hashtags for they will make your brand look desperate for attention and likes. Act professionally from the very beginning by choosing them wisely so that they clarify what your post is about.

While you are paying attention to the quality of your posts, do not forget about the quantity and the time at which they are posted. Do not stuff your profile with too many information at short intervals in a way that your follower cannot catch up with you. Take advantage of scheduling tools to save yourself the headache and better manage your posting time for the selected social media platform or platforms.

Another point that I should mention here is the importance of the visual appeal of your social media profile. It humanize your brand and people feel much more comfortable working with you or following you. In fact, a great content built in a boring environment fails to attract the masses, so try your best to invest in making your brand aesthetically pleasing by using relevant tools or apps as well as being creative and unique.

  • Engage with your followers effectively

Every brand is surely looking for some sort of engagement or in other words seeking to increase its social signals. Social signals refer to likes, comments, shares, votes, views or any other kind of engagement depending on the type of social media platform. As shares and conversations boost on your profile, more and more people start to introduce you to each other or hear about you by word of mouth. And guess what! You are building mutual trust and respect for your brand.

So get people to socialize with you by following below tips to stand out from your competitors and develop your brand trust:

  • Getting personal with them
  • Asking for their feedbacks
  • Responding to comments or messages
  • Running contests, campaigns or giveaways
  • Using live videos

Take advantage of your social profile reports or utilize tools to track your engagement stats and always be ready to adjust your strategy if you find something does not pay off as you expected.

  • Use influencer marketing

Nowadays people rarely turn to companies directly to get what they need or want. Instead, they focus more on individuals with a high follower count and engagement rate to decide on which product or service to use or which online persona to follow. These individuals are called influencers.

Influencers can pave the way for your online marketing since they already access to your target audience and boast established credibility. This way, you can save considerable amount of time. Choose influencers that are interested or expert in your niche to put your name out there. Note that a high engagement rate is worth much more than a high follower count because it shows the better quality of an influencer’s presence and his or her stronger community.

Wrap it up

If you don’t want to fall behind the competition, consider social media a must to promote your brand. It is regarded as an inexpensive way to reach the desired demography effectively, improve awareness or increase sales. Take into account the above mentioned points to get the most out of social media platforms for your brand.

What Should Social Media Marketers Understand about TikTok?

New social media platforms and apps are launched frequently, but not all get the same coverage. We have been receiving comments about the hot new app TikTok. So, in this article, I am going to share my knowledge of what TikTok is, how it’s used, and if Social Media Marketers will be struggling to use it for their customers or brands.

What is TikTok?

TikTok is the newest video-sharing app growing popularity in the United States. It’s indeed not all that new of an app; it’s only been re-branded.  TikTok used to be musically before but was taken by ByteDance, who previously had an app called TikTok. So, they joined musically and TikTok into one platform and held the name TikTok.

TikTok is the once trendy Twitter-owned app, Vine, which allows people to post funny short videos. Yet, TikTok is a bit more sturdy in that it will enable you to watch music videos, lip-sync to tunes, and edit your videos with filters, effects, and stickers. There’s also a feature called “duet” in which you can create a new video next to an existing video.

The New York Times explained TikTok as “a quirky hybrid of Snapchat, the defunct video app Vine, and the TV segment, Carpool Karaoke.”

How Popular is it?

TikTok currently has more than 700 million users worldwide. It has skyrocketed to the top of the charts in Apple’s App Store, YouTube, hitting Instagram, and Snapchat as the top free app. Celebrities like Khloe Kardashian, Jimmy Fallon,  and Nick Jonas have promoted the app, too, which has clearly increased its popularity.

Tips for Successful Digital Marketing Activities

As a business owner, even a small one, it is easy to feel like you are lagging behind the competition. After all, if you’re not a big brand, you can’t afford to hire an army of digital marketers to keep up with the latest digital marketing trends. But, it doesn’t mean you cannot become a one-person army! You can use your knowledge as a weapon. After reading this blog, you will be able to pick up your weapons and beat your competitor all by yourself. Many different digital marketing tips can carry you to success, but most of your competitors don’t know how to use them.

Our primary focus of this article is on the most popular digital marketing tips. They are popular because they are practical, but only if you know how, why and when to employ them. But first, let’s address a wrong way of thinking that many business owners have.

1- Eggs in too many baskets

This is a mistake that many amateur marketers make, trying to do everything at the same time with no experience. They set up ten different social media accounts, a PPC campaign, and a rigorous content schedule on a topic that they didn’t adequately researched into yet. The worst thing is that they have never been used more than half of those social media platforms before!

Are you familiar with this?

If so, then you should hold on. The worst mistake a new business can make is trying to manage too many social media accounts all at once. I will get to that in the next section.

But for now, you should learn that less is more! When you are just starting out, concentration and consistency should be your primary goal.

Concentration: if you try to manage several campaigns at once, you will be overwhelmed and wouldn’t find out which marketing campaigns are better than the others.

Consistency: this is the best way to get your brand off the ground.

  • Being consistent on social media will give you a loyal following.
  • Being consistent in your blogging will build a loyal customer base for you and turn new, cold readers into new customers.
  • Being consistent in SEO means that you will be able to save money in the long run instead of relying too much on purchased ads.

So, if small business owners try to do everything at the same time, they will fall flat on their faces. But you don’t have to be one of them.  By employing these digital marketing tips, you will be ahead of the game.

2- Find your place in social media

Most marketers know that they have to be on social media. After all, social media is not going anywhere! In 2018, 85% of Americans had a social media account.

3- Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is almost new in the field of digital marketing tips. In fact, most of your competition might have never heard of it! And for the ones who have, they are probably going about it the wrong way. But influencer marketing can be a potent tool when used correctly.

So what exactly is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing means that instead of marketing to your target customer directly, you inspire or pay influential people in your community to get the word out about you. When it comes to social platform users, influencers are basically one of the strongest referrals that your company can get.

So what people get wrong with influencer marketing?

Many small businesses still believe that getting lots of backlinks and doing loads of guest blogging will drive traffic and boost SEO. This was accurate in the past, but not anymore. Small brands these days have to tread carefully with getting backlinks and guest blogging because Google has cracked down on this method many times in the past. Google penalizes sites that abuse this method, and that’s not what you want for your new website!

Now that’s not to say that guest blogging is naturally a wrong method. Far from it! But it shouldn’t be done in a spammy form. Instead, it should be done with the primary goals in mind being:

  • Promoting your brand.
  • Building credibility by leaning on the shoulders of your industry giants.
  • Getting into another community.

4- Create an Email List

An email list is probably one of the most responsive and valuable assets you can have.

  • Responsive: according to researches, email subscribers are 4x more likely to share content on social media platforms.
  • Valuable: researchers on CRM found that customers who buy products through email spend 138% more money than the others.

The good thing is, unlike social media fans and followers, you own your email marketing list. However, believe it or not, many people don’t even think about having an email list. Instead, they believe that they can get away with just generating a social media following, which is a huge mistake. Sure, having a good social media following is very essential! But when it comes to turning random visitors into customers, email marketing is one the best ways to do it.

5- The 80-20 Rule for creating content

The 80-20 Rule means that 80 percent of your success on social media will come from 20 percent of your effort. For instance: webinars, videos, blog posts, infographics, etc.

So, how do you apply the 80-20 rule?

It’s quite simple, 80% of your content should bring value, and 20% of it should be promotional content. Valuable content means the content that is fresh, unique, educational, relevant, timely and solves real problems of your audience. So, your success will come from 20% of your effort, but that other 80% is necessary to draw it.

Many brands have it the other way around, which is wrong. 80% of the blogs are overly sales-y, and only 20% of their content contains valuable information! It is said that brands with valuable blogs receive 68% more leads than brands without blogs.

Other benefits of having a valuable blog include;

  • Getting more targeted traffic.
  • Adds a human side to your brand, therefore building loyalty and with your audience.
  • Cost-effective and easy to set up.

6- When should you rely on SEO?

Every marketer who is familiar with digital marketing has heard about SEO. But still, many brands shy away from it because they think it is complicated and too time-consuming. While both of these are true, SEO is the best way to drive organic and free traffic to your blog and website.

Even something as simple as your brand’s name can affect your ranking in search engine. Businesses with a strong keyword in their brand’s name rank two spots higher than brands without a keyword in their name. Instead of focusing on a long-term SEO plan, too many brands blow their digital marketing budgets on PPC ads on the beginning. We will talk more about it in the next section.

So what are the areas that SEO covers?

SEO can cover a wide area. But these are the main ones:

  • Page optimization
  • Website optimization
  • Device optimization
  • Reliable link building

There is a lot to learn, but implementing and learning SEO is necessary y for website visibility, you can take a look at past Google updates. The most critical Google update made websites that aren’t responsive on different digital devices not even show up in the search results at all! You don’t have to learn everything about SEO, learning the basics would be enough. Don’t expect immediate web traffic from doing SEO. It takes time to show results.

7- When is the right time to use paid advertising?

Many brands spend too much of their digital budget on PPC. They think they should spend money on paid advertising while starting out to get more traffic. But without a long term SEO strategy and a sales funnel, they start to rely on PPC to drive most of their sales. This is not a proper digital marketing method on its own. Because, well, more traffic is an excellent thing, but in the absence of a marketing funnel, you will not get optimal results.

Instead, you need to follow these three easy steps:

  1. Create a compelling and relevant offer. For instance, a free eBook or a newsletter.
  2. Create high-quality content for your website.
  3. Create targeted PPC to get more traffic.

Remember one of the best digital marketing tips: “Traffic isn’t Everything.”

A rookie mistake is to expect to turn random visitors into immediate customers.  You should bring them in first, and convert them into buyers later.

8- Improve the User’s Experience (UX)

Enhancing UX (User Experience) will be the glue that holds all of your strategies together.

The following are the popular ways to do this. There are also a lot more digital marketing tips for analyzing user experience.

  • The content on your website.
  • An intuitive user interface (UI).
  • The communication channels.
  • The loading speed of your Website.
  • Chatbots to use in communication.
  • Intuitive menu navigation.
  • An excellent tone for your content.

To make the optimal choices for those areas, you’ll want to learn more about your target audience.

How to create a good user experience?

  1. Remember to inspire and inform your audience with your content. This will give them a permanent impression of your brand and make engagement more comfortable.
  2. You’ll need a customer management plan to help you relate better with customers. It will take you through complaint and query management. It’ll also collect customer feedback and make them feel like they are a part of your community.
  3. Another thing to have in mind is the effectiveness of video marketing. It proceeds to trend upward in popularity with the growth of live streaming. Popular social media platforms have already embraced live streaming. Consider Instagram Stories, Facebook Live, and Snapchat Stories to engage with your target audience.

Final thoughts

As you can see, the most excellent way you can get ahead of your competition is to use the right and tried methods of digital marketing suitably. Your competitors will keep making the same mistakes, while you will be sidestepping the deviated paths and growing your brand with these digital marketing tips.

What do you think? Make sure to check on our other blogs about digital marketing. If you have any other questions about digital marketing or Instagram marketing, you can ask us in the comments below

Best Way to Use Social Media for Multiple Affiliate Marketing Programs

Using social media for affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and quickest ways to start making money online. Affiliate marketing is a partnership between a brand and an external website, where the external party helps promoting a product or service, and the brand pays them a commission for each click that drives into an actual sale.

While using social media for affiliate marketing can be the most efficient method, you have to make sure your social media posts not only spread your affiliate and website links but include actual value as well.

Posts without value are the ones that will cause your followers to lose interest in you. And without your audience, you can’ be successful in affiliate marketing. For example, on my social accounts, I like to have 75% of my posts as education or entertainment purposes only, and only 25% of my posts are promotional.

Facebook for affiliate marketing

Many influencers are focusing on Instagram, but we should have Facebook in our minds too. The average user spends 35 minutes per day on Facebook, compare that number to 15 minutes per day on Instagram. Additionally, based on my personal experience of running multiple affiliate programs, Facebook produces higher conversions for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Multiple affiliate marketing programs

Organizing and maintaining affiliate links on a single website can be a task one person can manage. If you own multiple affiliate programs, though, managing links without an effective strategy can waste so much of your time that leaves little to no time for creating new content and building relationships with your audience. To manage our affiliate links efficiently across different websites, you can use the platforms which can help you convert your multiple links into one short link.

  • Create a fan page: yes, fan pages can be challenging when it comes to audience reach. However, only fan-pages can boost a post on Facebook, so your affiliate blog should be seen on your fan page at first.
  • Boost your post: A Facebook boost is required if you want To catch some fresh eyes on your post,  The first type of boost I suggest is to your existing followers. Because they have already Liked your page. It is the most modest and top converting boost.
  1. To get started, just click on the Boost Post button.
  2. Once you click, select users Who Like Your Page, Your Total Budget and Duration.

 I recommend beginning with a small budget and duration until you have endorsed your return on investment. If you got your Likes authentically and chose a product your audience responds to, your ROI will be high. If you do not have a substantial ROI, test different titles and content.

  • Share on personal pages: Don’t forget to share your Page post to your personal Profile too. Facebook’s algorithms do not affect personal Profiles. Personal profiles are an excellent way to reach out to family and friends who want to support your business.

YouTube for affiliate marketing

Videos are a fantastic way to engage your audience on a personal and relatable level. Every top converting affiliate creates both a regular blog post as well as a video review.

  • Keep your YouTube videos under 5 minutes if possible. The shorter, the better.
  • Begin the video with your key selling points.
  • Ask your subscribers to click on the affiliate links for more information and to purchase.
  • Include multiple calls to action throughout the post.
  • Titles are the first impression. Your video title should include keywords and be engaging.
  • Include your script in the Closed Caption for optimization goals.

Instagram for affiliate marketing

Instagram is an excellent tool for affiliate marketing. The challenge with Instagram is persuading your followers to click on a link. Instagram has only one place for clickable links, and that is just in the bio. Remember; it is absolutely okay to change your bio link frequently.

  • Use a URL shortening platform for your affiliate links like iLink.
  • Use a unique and personal photo whenever possible.
  • Direct followers to your blog where you have included your affiliate link.
  • Use Instagram to drive traffic to your website and develop your email list.
  • Do not purchase followers. Organic engagement equals conversions. Don’t be seduced by offers of cheap followers or fake likes and comments through “comment pod” groups.
  • Use related hashtags and be consistent with them.
  • Reach for influencers in your niche and take notes.

Multiple affiliate marketing on one social media account

As you may know, every social media platform has its own flows. For Example, Instagram doesn’t let you use more than one link on your profile bio. Or in some social networks, links you share would not be clickable. So as for Instagram, you should consistently change the link on your bio to be able to affiliate for different brands.

But don’t worry.

I have the best solution to this problem. Just keep reading.

Have as many affiliate links as you want

You can be an affiliate to different brands by using short link generators or creating a landing page for your affiliate links. This way you don’t have to spend your precious time on replacing links all the time. Instead, you can focus on creating engaging content to attract new followers from your target audience, therefore make more money, right?

Best platform for URL shortening

iLink

iLink is a full-service URL shortener that helps you convert multiple links into one short link. Part of the appeal is that iLink is simple and easy to use. It has a comprehensive dashboard where you can track and analyze the statistics about your links like click-through numbers and rates. Tools for trailing campaigns are easy to use as well.

  • You can also set beautiful themes for your iLink page
  • You can add your contact information to your iLink bio
  • You can also add your social media accounts to your home page so that people can reach you online.
  • iLink is entirely free! So you can enjoy using it without paying anything.

That’s it

Have you tried link shorteners before? What do you think about affiliate marketing on social media?

Social Media Marketing Trends 2019

These days, social media is playing an important role on every business strategy. If a brand isn’t active on social media, they are making things very harder on their business than they need to be. Social media is consistently changing and improving, so it can be hard to understand how social media is changing the game. In this article, I am going to break down the top social media marketing trends of 2019 that entirely changed our perception of social media.

1-   Augmented reality

Augmented reality is already being used in a few small ways, but it’d leaving a great impact that can last into the future. One of the most obvious examples is facial filters of snap chat. Many of them have sponsors in the corner of screen and users can create their own geo filter as well, you can take advantage of these features to build a better brand awareness on other platforms to further your reach while personalizing interaction.

2-   From text-first to visual-first

2019 is all about visuals. In addition to temporary content, video content in general, including live video, is the crucial section that brands need to focus on. Videos will continue to dominate social network and can be a massive trend for 2019, as it was, for 2018. According to digital marketing expert Marcus Sheridan, 80% of what we share and consume online will be video content, by 2019. Even YouTube continues to grow as platform, giving more opportunity to YouTubers to create authentic video content for their subscribers. By making their presence stronger on these video platforms, brands can benefit from the productive effects of owning and engaging an audience.

“With organic social media for brands slowly trending towards zero across all social media platforms, businesses in 2019 will have to focus on two things to be able to continue to be seen in the newsfeed of their fans and target audience: 1. Engage and build relationships with influencers and invest in a comprehensive and long-term influencer relations program, and 2. Invest exponentially more in newer content mediums such as Stories and live streaming, as well as more traditional visual content mediums such as photo and video.

Brands need to move from a text-first approach to a visual-first mentality when communicating, and similar to how every business became a media company with the advent of social media, they now must transform themselves into a visual magazine if not a television station in order to continue to be heard by the audience that matters to them.”

Neal Schaffer – Renowned author, CEO & Principal Social Media Strategy Consultant at Maximize Your Social.

3-   Social data _ transparency and trust

Data privacy and security across social media has been a critical matter of policy debate during 2018. In fact, social media has made it much easier to create, collect, and collect people’s data on a big scale. Marketers have to find more authentic and interactive ways of communicating with their audience, instead of one-sided marketing discussions twirling around gathering masses of user data without giving any value proposition to the audience.

4-   Changing organic reach

Finally, organic reach on social media is also changing. Earlier this year, Facebook published significant changes to its algorithm, to ensure users see more posts from their friends and family and less from pages and brands. As a result, companies that had powerful methods of organic reach set in place did not face drastic declines in views and engagement due to this change and brands that did not make use of organic reach found themselves at a more significant loss. These highlights are the main area to focus in 2019, maybe one that brands take for granted on social media, to improve their organic reach over social media platforms.

That’s it for today. There are more trends that I will talk about them later on the next blog.

10 Jobs that Pay you to Be on Social Media all Day

If you are one of those people who spend all of their time on Snapchat and Instagram, you should find a job that makes the most of your social media savvy.

Imagine a place where you don’t have to cover your phone screen when your boss walks by so he does not get you rechecking your Instagram or Facebook. Or a workplace where it is considered an obligatory to be stuck to your phone, tapping and scrolling through Instagram.

Well, this is not just a dream, it can be real, and you could be a part of it, getting paid to help businesses successfully market their services and products on social media.

We have found ten social media jobs in the digital marketing area where you would spend at least part of your 9-to-5 scrolling, sharing and liking with the society.

1- Marketing manager

Marketing managers used to run commercial campaigns in newspapers, magazines, television commercials and billboards. Now businesses are spending considerable amounts of their marketing budgets on website ads and social media.

2- Copywriter

You will be in charge of writing engaging copies for their social network posts. You should promote a brand in 150 characters or less.

  • You will need: it is helpful to have at least an undergraduate degree in English, communications or marketing.
  • Earnings: $60,500 per year

 

3- Art director

Art directors are the ones who are responsible for the aesthetic imagery you see in offline and online advertisements, such as social media content. They produce the photo and video shoots for campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

4- Graphic designer

Graphic designers produce creative photos and images using software such as Photoshop. They create illustrations, motion graphics like GIFs, designs and Cinemagraphs. Graphic designers know how to create informative, engaging social media content.

5- Public relations specialist

Public relations specialists have to help brands, and people perform a positive public image. They help to monitor brand perception on social media platforms and share press hits, and press releases on social media.

6- Customer service representative

People are likely to take to Instagram, Facebook, and even twitter when they have a complaint or question. Customer service agents spend time answering social network comments and messages to solve problems and increase customer satisfaction.

7- You will need:

A bachelor’s degree, or just a high school diploma. You can see a sample Customer service representative resume for here.

  • Earnings: $31,700 per year

8- Film and video editor

Videos can bring good engagements for you on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. Video editor would create brief content that lives exclusively on social media platforms.

  • You will need: a bachelor’s degree, preferably in broadcast journalism, film or marketing.
  • Earnings: $55,000 per year

 

9- Social media marketing manager (account manager)

They should work with in-house agent heads with an organization or at an agency; they will be responsible for being the main contact for the customer, social media team, content team and other people to conceive marketing strategies.

10- Promotion manager

It is said that social media is “pay to play” _ this means that a business or a brand should spend money to get more users to see it’s content on social media.

You have to produce purchased media strategies, as well as purchasing encouragements like sweepstakes, sales, contests, and coupons.
you can also use automation tools such as Instagram bots, to save more free time for yourself and automate the routine process.

  • You will need: a bachelor’s degree, in marketing or business.
  • Earnings: $124,000 per year

 

And that’s it.

We hope you enjoyed this article.

Please share our articles with your friends and leave us a comment below.

 

 

 

The Potential of Social Media for B2B

Social media is the digital marketing tool with the potential to give you the most result for your business – and it doesn’t have to cost you a penny. What do you know about the benefits social media can provide to B2B brands?

B2B Benefits

Social media will help to generate leads for more than half of all B2B companies. However, that isn’t the only benefit to be had from a good social media strategy.

B2B marketers has reported these benefits for using social media:

  • 50% reduced their marketing expenses
  • 55% grew their business partnerships
  • 55% established thought leadership
  • 58% improved their search engine rankings
  • 69% developed loyal fans
  • 77% increased their traffic
  • 90% increased their exposure

Top social media sites for B2B

Facebook may be the best one with 1.59 billion users per month, but the best business platform of last year was Instagram, which increased its monthly active users to the tune of 400 million in 12 months– not even Facebook can grow that much. Other social media options include:

 

  • YouTube at 1.44 billion monthly users
  • Twitter at 320 million active users
  • Pinterest at 100 million active monthly users
  • LinkedIn has up to 400 million users, but only 25% use it monthly.

 

Challenges

  • 17% of B2B service businesses have not been able to determine the impact of social media on their business
  • Only 30% of B2B marketing projects use marketing analytics
  • 15% of B2B companies find it challenging to meet “the expectations of the always-connected

Tips and tricks

What should I do to get the most out of social media?

  • Include pictures in your posts
  • Start an employee promotion campaign
  • Invest in shareable content
  • Get into live streaming with Facebook Live
  • Try new platforms
  • experiment with 360-degree video

How to Use Memes and Jokes for Social Media Marketing?

Memes are the most popular form of online expressions because they go hand-in-hand almost on every social media platform, which lets them expand like wildfire.

Also, people have fairly short attention spans online, so the compact nature of memes makes them the perfect medium for a quick share.

What exactly is a meme?

According to the Oxford dictionary:

“A meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.”

The current form of memes is often images followed by text; these pictures usually carry some sort of pop-cultural idea or reference in a humorous way. They are then traditionally shared, changed and distributed over many social media platforms. Often with the intent of the photo morphing into something completely different.

Before social media, memes were shared via email, forums, and blogs. One of the first ones was the Dancing baby, which was so popular in the 90s, that it made a cameo on the TV show Ally McBeal. Another early meme was the Hamster dance, a webpage created as the result of a competition between two sisters to get the most web traffic.

Memes can spread and improve, and they don’t necessarily have a short life. For example, the LOLcats meme is still being used—classical by internet standards.

Types of memes that you can use on social media

  1. Rage comics:

    These memes are created with pre-made cartoon faces, or the rage faces to express a specific emotion. They usually humorize a relatable experience. Since they use facial expressions, they are super easy to identify and understand. Examples include  Like a Boss, the troll face, Cereal Guy, and Forever Alone Guy.

  2. Image macros:

    Apparently the most recognizable kind of memes, these are photos that feature a funny caption or catchphrase. Thanks to meme generator sites, most of these memes have a bold, white Impact font with a black border.

  3. Exploitables:

    Exploitable memes have different types, including single-pane or multi-pane comics, but the main idea stays the same: a template that is easy to change into new permutations of a joke. Four-pane comics are the most popular type of exploitable format.

How to use memes and jokes for social media marketing?

When it comes to using memes and jokes for your social media marketing, there are some general rules that you should consider.

Like any other entertainment medium, using memes as a brand have some risks. You don’t want a poorly composed or offensive meme to drive away your audience and customers. So, before you begin spamming your social media feeds, review these guidelines.

Do

  • Most essential “Do” of all, is to have a social media strategy, if you want to use memes and jokes, these should be in your plan.
  • Keep the joke/meme relevant to your niche and your brand.
  • Make sure the joke doesn’t include any offensive, sensitive or controversial contexts.
  • Try to keep it short and straightforward. Everyone may not understand memes that are too niche.
  • Understand your audience base on including their demographic structure and the social media platforms that they engage.

Don’t

  • Discredit competitors.
  • Try to create a viral campaign for yourself. ( unless you have a massive following). It’s better to use or change existing memes.
  • Use memes that may be socially/politically/religiously contentious.
  • Overdo it. Use memes in the right amount or else your followers will be overwhelmed and exhausted.

Conclusions

Although individual memes come and go, they are here to stay, because they are easy to create and easier to share. From a business owner point of view, they are inexpensive and have the opportunity to go viral. Still, they have to research their content before sharing and consider their target audience and people they want to influence.

Tips on social media customer care

Here is how you can use social media to improve customer relations:

1-Straight your priorities

Pick your platform

You should focus on providing CRM to followers on the platform which you have the most following there.

  • Survey customers to see where they would want to interact the most.
  • Find out on which platform would an unanswered negative comment have the most impact.

You should conduct a competitive audit in your niche to create a CRM strategy for your brand.

Create a query network

You should consider multiple factors while ranking your response time:

  • Their score

Are they an influencer?

  • Social following

How many people will see their comment?

  • Negative comments

Try to flag @mentions as positive, negative or neutral.

2-Listen to your audience

Create a social media listening dashboard with related sites and transition to a social media service platform.

3-Respond

  • 1% of customers say social media provides the best customer experience for them.
  • 29% of customers receive a response while voicing a complaint on
  • 49% of customers do not have a positive reaction to the responses they receive.

What should I do?

  • Respond right away
  • Follow them
  • Reply to their posts or tweets.
  • Don’t pass the problem on
  • Ask for their contact information via private message
  • Tell them you have contacted customer service on their behalf
  • Follow up with them as soon as the action has been taken
  • Give them a timeframe for resolution.

Publicly announces

  • Don’t let your last response be a promise to fix the issue, send them feedback
  • Leave a reply or comment after solving the problem
  • Ask them if you can help them with anything else
  • Offer coupons or discounts to please unhappy customers. ( this can boost your customer satisfaction.

Don’t just rely on social media

Emphasize social media as a supplement to traditional customer service, not as an alternative.

Make sure to provide contact information to customer service representatives as much as you can.

4-Measure the effects

Here is a crucial metric for gauging CRM effectiveness

  • Percentage of messages that receive a response
  • Average response time per message
  • Average troubleshooting time
  • Percentage of queries managed by social channel
  • Changes in customer satisfaction