During the 2013 holiday season, retailers saw a 39% increase in traffic to their sites from Facebook referrals. Furthermore, 65% of shoppers said they used social media websites for gift ideas last year. Facebook is the preferred medium of choice for marketers, with 92% putting the bulk of their holiday marketing efforts on the popular site. Here are eight tips for your brand to get the most out of the 2014 shopping season. 1. Know what you want. Clear, concise goals are the essential launching point of every advertising campaign — offline or online. Sure, you want attention and brand exposure. You want people to click on your links and read your blogs. You want people to “like” and share your content. But ultimately, you are looking for sales, right? Decide on a percentage or dollar value you’d like to see, and monitor your progress. 2. Measure achievements. In addition to […]
Recently Facebook revealed a month-long error in their reach and engagement metrics. Our team at Mod Girl Marketing noticed this a few weeks back as several of our clients’ Facebook posts revealed a very low reach but high number of likes. We assumed something was off with the FB system and we were right. Given this recent finding and the buzz around Facebook Pages and the lack of reach without investing advertising dollars, we decided to put together the top 8 ways Facebook Pages can improve their engagement without spending money. Social Media Speaker Michael Leander defines positive Facebook engagement as anything “above 1%.” Average engagement ranges from 0.5 to 0.99% and anything below 0.5% requires intervention. To calculate your engagement rate, you’ll want to consider: Of course, each industry differs in the level of engagement attainable. People are much more likely to interact with posts about vacationing at […]
It’s easy to get a social media page rolling, especially if you have the time and desire to give it your all. Yet, you’ll soon find that a pretty placeholder is not enough to achieve your business goals and make the investment worth your while. The true measure of social media success is what the experts call “engagement.” In other words: how many fans of your page are liking, commenting and sharing your social media content? The more people perform these activities, the more your brand will come up in their news feeds and the news feeds of their friends to extend your company’s reach. This is word-of-mouth advertising at its finest. We find this to be an ongoing challenge too — especially when you’re in a “dry” industry like insurance, parts manufacturing, finance or marketing where people may not be as excited about sharing your news as they would be on Starbucks’ page or […]
Businesses have largely accepted the fact that social media sites are an integral part of an overall online marketing strategy. Anyone who tracks analytical data can see the impact that social media is having on lead generation, referral traffic and revenue. Here are 8 social media trends we’re expecting to take wing in 2014. 1. Google + gains social status. Google + may not have as much social media clout as Facebook and Twitter, but experts across the board are predicting a rise to fame in 2014. Google now requires YouTube users to have a Google+ account in order to comment. New changes to Google Hangouts and picture sharing features are likely to turn more heads in 2014. Recently, they announced that they have more than 300 million active monthly users. Brand ambassadors say they like the visual layout of Google +. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, Google tends […]
If you’re not careful, social media can gobble up every spare moment you have. Often when we market on Facebook or Twitter, we get the feeling that there is a better, easier way to conduct marketing research and execute basic tasks. And there is! HootSuite lets you maximize your social networking efforts, without expending too much time or energy. Read on for eight reasons why HootSuite is an essential for any marketer’s tool kit!
On Tuesday morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that “Graph Search” is coming to the site. Here’s what you need to know… 1. Graph Search Will Make It Easier To Find Information. Graph Search lets you search through your friends’ photos, page likes, interests, check-ins, and activities. For instance, you might type in “Friends who like biking” to get a list of everyone who has marked that as a hobby on their profiles. Or you might type in “Pictures of friends in Germany” to see who has been to the country on vacation. Need a recommendation? Just type in a search query like “TV shows my friends like.” 2. Facebook Is Becoming More Competitive. Much like the online dating sites, you can now search something like “friends of friends who are single and like indie rock music.” Like LinkedIn, you can search for “friends of friends who work at Goldman Sachs.” […]
Christmas is right around the corner and before you know it, 2013 will officially be here! It will be a time for renewal for many businesses. We’ll assess our sales performance over the last year, review our analytics data, and check out the latest consumer trends to formulate our game plans for the coming quarter. Here are 8 social media statistics from 2012 that I found particularly interesting. (Hopefully you will too!) 1. Social media users spent 121.18 BILLION minutes using social media in July 2012. You can compare this figure to July of 2011, when social media users spent a total of 88.48 billion minutes. That’s a 37 percent increase! Today’s Facebook and Twitter user is much more engaged and willing to spend vast amounts of time in these portals. You can extend your reach further than before with the addition of the “Pages Feed,” which makes it easier […]
Black Friday is a day marketers dream about all year long. Shoppers are promised deep discounts as a reward for getting an early start on their Christmas Shopping. Retailers can then sleep easy at night for most of the holiday season, knowing that they’re “in the black” sooner – rather than later. One would think social media and Black Friday sales would be a match made in heaven. After all, what better way to find all the doorbuster sales than to hashtag #BlackFriday on Twitter, watch a few product demos on YouTube, or peruse your friend’s shopping activity on Facebook? It’s been exactly 1 week since Black Friday and the results are in… But alas, Black Friday 2012 was an EPIC FAIL. Here are 8 reasons why… 1. The news headlines are driving home the notion that social media is useless in driving sales. Given the raw data from the […]