Examples Of Great Social Media Content & The Tools Used Achieve Them

When you work with an experienced digital agency, you will notice that nothing is left to chance. Whenever an agency tries something new, it will be obsessed with gathering data and seeing how the new thing performs against expectations. So when you see a company sharing something on social media, you can almost be assured that the research has been done to show that the content will work and the platform will be effective.

One of the fun things about observing the activities of corporations on social media is you can immediately notice trends that companies try to maximize. When a particular type of social media post becomes popular for one company, you can expect to see other companies try it. Over the years, corporations have had plenty of time to determine what type of social media content works and what types of tools can be used to create the ideal content.

Animated GIFs

The GIF picture format has become popular throughout the Internet for the ability to create animated GIFs that can make people laugh, or deliver any kind of message. Animated GIFs are becoming extremely popular on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms for their ability to give a little motion to a story or bring a smile to peoples' faces.

There are two types of animated GIFs that people are using; GIFs that have to be played like a movie, and animated pictures with backgrounds that move. Gifmaker.me is a great tool to use to turn a series of pictures into a fun animated GIF, and Licecap is a good tool to make what are called screen shot GIFs. For example, a screen shot GIF would be a picture of a horse in the foreground and the grass waving in the breeze in the background. These types of images are becoming extremely popular on social media for companies of all types.

SnapChat Filters

If you own a company that is not using SnapChat filters to reach your target audience, then now is the time to get started. SnapChat is rapidly becoming the social media platform of choice for people who like sharing pictures, and the filters allow you to do just about anything you want to make your pictures interesting and, more important, worth sharing.

Shareable Quotes

If you have been paying attention to social media lately, you may have noticed an increase in companies sharing quotes. While it can look random, it is actually very well-planned. Social media responds well to quotes put into a pleasant format that have some kind of relevance to the subject matter at hand. So a fast food chain that wants to attract more franchisees would post a quote from a famous business personality and then attach the quote in some way to the idea of opening a franchise.

Infographics

If you have data you want to present to your audience, then you need to figure out how to get that data into a visual format. Infographics are single images that use colorful graphics and other eye-catching methods to present data in a way that social media readers cannot ignore. If it is important that your target audience reads your data, then put it into the format of an infographic.

Great social media content inspires an audience to act on that information and to share that information as well. With the help of a good digital agency, your company can be delivering exactly what social media wants to read and reaping the financial rewards of increased exposure.

Double Down With Your Online Marketing Efforts Using This Google Service

If you are a website owner and you have never heard of remarketing, then now is the ideal time to get acquainted with this extremely powerful piece of marketing strategy. The term remarketing actually refers to a collection of strategies designed to turn traffic that left your website without making a purchase into buying customers. Google has always had good remarketing tools, but now Google has released a tool that will make remarketing easier and more effective.

The Unlikely Chance of a Sale

According to Searchenginewatch.com, the vast majority of the traffic that visits your website is only there to read your content. While this is a great motivator for creating effective content, it underscores how important good online marketing is to a successful business.

It is estimated that only two percent of your traffic ever decide to make a purchase on your website. That makes the traffic that does buy products from your website that much more valuable, but it also indicates just how important it is to gear some of your marketing efforts towards bring back the traffic that showed some interest in buying your products.

How Does Remarketing Work?

Remarketing uses a variety of methods to give focused information to that traffic that showed some interest in buying products, but never completed a sale. For example, if someone created a shopping cart for widgets on your website but never checked out, then that person would start seeing more ads for the specific type of widgets they were interested in on your website as they browsed the Internet.

Remarketing is done through advertising networks such as Google, and it is most effective when teamed up with a variety of other marketing tactics. Remarketing can reach out to people who have created and abandoned shopping carts or it can reach out to people who visited your ecommerce page and never selected an item. When used properly, remarketing is extremely effective.

Google Display Network Remarketing

Google Display Network Remarketing is a new service from Google that combines the marketing powers of AdWords, Analytics, and the Google Merchant Center into a much more focused remarketing approach. With the Google Display Network Remarketing program, your traffic will get product display ads or links to product pages that will give more detailed information on the products they showed an interest in on your page.

What makes this Google remarketing tool so powerful is that it includes ads, images, and text that are specifically geared towards people who have an interest in your product but did not make a sale. This allows marketing professionals to create much more effective messages that can turn prospects into buying customers.

The right tools in the hands of a marketing professional can help your website to get more response from the two percent of web traffic that visits ecommerce pages. With the Google Display Network Remarketing program, your website will be able to actively pursue potential customers with information that is specifically designed to turn their interest in your products into profit in your pockets.

Social Media Cheat Sheets 2016

Ah, social media. To the business owner, social media looks like a great place to talk directly to millions of potential customers for free. But for the digital marketing expert, social media is a long-term commitment that only works when it is fed the right information on a regular basis.

To be able to utilize social media properly, you have to be on it every day and you have to stay up to date on all of the changes each platform experiences. That can be a tall order, which is why you need cheat sheets that you can update regularly with the basic information you need to properly maximize social media.

Image Sizes

Social media platforms are constantly updating the size of their display fields, and even the way that images are presented. An image size that worked a couple of months ago could now create an image that would be too large or small for the screen. It is important to make notes of any image size changes to each platform, and then adjust your image posting habits accordingly.

Promotional Rules

There was a period of time when Facebook was constantly updating its rules regarding what companies could and could not do when it came to posting promotions. Many companies had their Facebook profiles suspended because they did not keep up with the rule changes. As you receive information from social media platforms regarding changes to the rules regarding promotions, you need to make notes of those changes on your cheat sheets to avoid any problems with your social media accounts.

Advertising Guidelines

Digital marketing experts are forever updating their social media cheat sheets to indicate any changes in the advertising guidelines for each platform. The changes in advertising guidelines could be one of the more dynamic parts of any social media platform, and it is critically important that you stay updated on every change that occurs with the platforms you use.

Followers

Some platforms call them followers, other platforms call them friends. A few years ago, Facebook significantly altered the way in which businesses are allowed to interact with their audience. If you want to reach your audience, now you have to pay.

The social media platforms are always changing guidelines when it comes to followers. In some cases, the platforms limit the number of followers a company can have, while other platforms open up their business pages to an unlimited number of followers. It is very important to understand all of the rules and the changes to the rules that apply to followers on your social media page.

Social media management is more than a full-time job, and it requires the focus of an experienced professional to maximize social media exposure. Many digital marketing firms use social media cheat sheets to keep up with the changes that occur on every platform, and they refer to those cheat sheets regularly to make sure that they are getting the best possible exposure for their clients.

A social media cheat sheet is a very dynamic document that, in some cases, changes every week. When you work with a professional digital marketing agency, you can rest assured that they have updated social media cheat sheets and know how to use them to your advantage.

Top 3 Reasons Your Competitor's Website Ranks Higher Than Yours

It is not difficult for you to do some research to see where your website ranks in the top search words and phrases in your industry. But when you do get those search results, you may be disappointed at what you find. If your competition is working with a digital agency for their website and you are not, then the chances are pretty good that their website ranks higher than yours.

The primary reasons why your competition is beating your website has to do with the types of comprehensive services a digital agency offers, versus your attempts at growing your website on your own. There are a lot of reasons why your competitor's website ranks higher than yours in search results, but there are three primary reasons that you should be aware of.

You Must Have A SEO Strategy

Getting good SEO results can only happen when you have a comprehensive SEO strategy, and a good SEO strategy takes time to unfold. If you are not mapping every step of your SEO progression, then you are flying blind and you will get hit or miss results. If you want consistent SEO results that will get you the best spots on search engine results pages, then you need a comprehensive written SEO strategy.

Your SEO strategy includes planning out blog posts, updating keywords and following trends that dictate how your traffic responds to your content. Without the right type of SEO strategy at work, you will not get the kinds of traffic results you are looking for.

Mixing In Paid Search Processes

Ever since Google started changing its algorithms around in 2012, the idea of organic search results has dominated the digital marketing industry. It takes months of hard work to establish a trend of good organic SEO results, but that foundation can lead to a significant rise in traffic when it is firmly established.

A comprehensive marketing plan that beats the competition includes paid marketing processes in with the organic marketing to get maximum results. Elements such as pay per click and banner marketing are going to work side-by-side with SEO content for your blog to get the best results.

Properly Utilizing Social Media

Most business owners who attempt to use social media for business purposes are going about everything the wrong way. First of all, you have to be sure that your target audience is even part of a social media platform's demographics before you commit time to that platform. You also need a dedicated staff to constantly update your social media pages, and interact with the people who have asked questions or made comments.

In order to beat your competitors in web rankings, you need to utilize social media in an efficient and professional manner. You need to make sure that every post you publish on all of your social media pages has a purpose, and that it ties into the rest of your marketing efforts in some way. Social media can be an excellent wait to retain customers and grow your customer base, but only when it is used properly.

The bottom line is if you want your website to beat the competition's in web ranking, then you need the help of a professional digital agency. A professional organization will have the years of experience and necessary understanding of how dynamic Internet systems work to push your website to the top of all of the major search engines.