Tag Archive for: Social Media

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Advertising

/in , , , , /by

Social media advertising is a powerful tool that can really take your online presence to the next level. Now is the time, as so many companies have taken to digital to promote and sell their brand. However, it is not necessary to advertise on every single social media platform. In fact, advertising on certain platforms may drive your profit margin in the opposite direction. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for you? Learn from the experts at Onimod Global to discover the first steps your company should take.

Identify Your Audience

The first mistake lots of companies make is looking at the amount of advertisers on each platform and choosing in this way. For example, 3 million people are advertising on Facebook, so you automatically choose this platform doing no further research. While the amount of people is very telling as to what can be successful, it is better to identify your audience and which platforms they are the most active on.

Write down the following questions:

  • Who is your typical customer?
  • How old are they?
  • Are they male or female?
  • What is their income and education level?
  • What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

Use the answers to these questions in order to build out your audience profile.

Define Your Goals

This is an important step, because each campaign can be better optimized on certain platforms than others depending on how you want customers to convert. There are also several different types of campaigns on these platforms. For example, say your headhunting company wants IT students to fill out a form on your website applying for interviews. Your goal and your audience must match up with the specific social platform. If you aren’t sure where to start with setting an action goal for your target audience, try starting with a brand awareness campaign. Brand recognition always proves to be an important topic for online shoppers.

Find The Audience

Now that you have your audience and goals defined, it’s time to see which social media platform your potential customers are the most active on. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. For example, the younger age demographic is on both Facebook and Instagram, but they are more active on Instagram. Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global can help take your social media advertising to the next level. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips to Increase Your Brand’s Engagement on Social Media

/in , /by

Promoting your brand through social media has become vital for overall business success. But just being on social channels isn’t enough anymore. The key to real success is through user engagement. This can help increase your brand awareness, customer relationships, and conversions, ultimately improving profits. 

Something that often gets lost to marketers is this: engagement is much more than just likes. Engagement is also comments, shares, follows, re-tweets, clicks, private messages, etc. And these types of engagements are often more valuable than likes. That sounds great, but how can brands accomplish all this? We’re here to help. Here are 5 tips for boosting your brand’s engagement across all social platforms.  

1. Talk about interesting topics, not just your brand. 

It’s common for businesses to frequently or exclusively post about their products or services. That’s not really not what social media is for, or what users want to see. The best content is exciting and informative. Ask yourself if it’s something you’d want to see or would share. It’s also important to ask yourself how it makes you feel. What getting people to engage, click, and convert comes down to is emotion. You should constantly be evaluating if your content is making you feel something and if that is worth sharing. If it’s not, editing and reevaluating may be needed. Most importantly, the content you’re creating and putting out to your audience should have value. The value is either making your audience happy, gives steps on how to get there, or anything else that’s beneficial. 

2. Join and hold Q&A’s and surveys. 

Joining Q&A sessions is a great way to provide your audience with value and get more brand awareness. You can spark discussions with prospective customers, all before competitors, you can become the go-to seller. Consumers are more impatient than ever and don’t want to wait for answers. That’s why, if it’s possible, you should have a dedicated response management person/team. While answering questions quickly is important, it’s also important to answer them accurately and clearly. We advise you to complete ongoing research for the most commonly asked questions and develop sample answers that can be customized for each question/situation. 

3. Share other people’s content. 

Constantly creating interesting, high quality, and engaging content is not easy. If there’s someone else providing quality answers to a query or other relevant content, make use of it. Your audience will see that you are there to give them what they need, no matter where it comes from. If your feed provides relevant and valuable information, whether it’s yours or not, people will be more attracted to your brand and be more encouraged to follow you. Keeping your feed diverse and from different contributors keeps audiences interested.

4. Make your customers feel engaged. 

To boost engagement, you need to be social. This means directly responding to all messages, comments, etc. Whether it be negative or positive, responding is essential. Show appreciation for the positive comments and suggest solutions for negative ones. It’s also important to respond to posts that aren’t addressing you directly, but indirectly or through hashtags. When responding you should present yourself as personable and approachable, ultimately humanizing your brand. Addressing comments with the person’s name is a great way to do this. It shows that the comment wasn’t computer generated and that someone really is listening to them. You should also try to match the person’s tone/emotion. If their comment was lighthearted and included emojis, feel free to use them back. This is a great way to generate a longer conversation and may even get other audience members involved. 

When it comes to negative comments, it’s smart to have a plan on how you’re going to deal with them. You want to be able to respond quickly to stop the issue from growing. You want to respond to show others that you’re not just ignoring the problem, but it’s also best to take the conversation offline and solve the problem privately. 

5. Post frequently and at optimal times. 

Posting frequently across all channels is vital for overall social media success. This shows your audience you’re relevant and up-to-date on the latest trends. This also helps your audience members stay up-to-date with you. Loyal customers want to know what’s happening with your brand the moment it occurs. Whether it’s a promotion, a new product/service, expansion, etc. This helps your audience stay connected and strengthens your relationship with them. 

A large part of engagement is posting at optimal times (when your audience is online and active). Most people are online during lunch hours or later at night, but it’s important to do research on your audience specifically. A/B testing may be necessary. Experiment with posting times to see which performs best and generates the most engagement amongst your audience. 

Social media moves quickly. If users think your page is inactive, they will unfollow you. Which is why it’s important to be posting as frequently as you can. Everyday isn’t necessary, but a few times a week is best practice. 

Final Thoughts

No matter what industry you’re in, social media is beneficial. It only continues to grow in value as times change in 2020. Brands that are focusing on growing their social media engagement are benefiting from better marketing reach, ROI and higher brand awareness. All which makes it easier to reach prospects and customers. Boosting and sustaining engagement is difficult and does take time, but it’s not impossible. It takes knowing your audience, a strong strategy and ongoing effort. In the end, it will be worth it. 

More from Onimod Global

As experts in social media marketing, our team knows where and when your customers need you most. We help create visibility for brands where their customers are searching, interacting and engaging. If you’re struggling in social media or any area of digital marketing, contact us today.

The Right Social Media Image Sizes In 2020

/in , , /by

With the world searching more and more online during the COVID-19 crisis, it’s important your brand and social image is professional and polished. Using images which aren’t the correct size for each platform’s requirements can impact your brand perception. Low quality and pixelated visuals make you look unprofessional or not up to date. Are you not sure if you’re using the correct image sizes? Use our image size guide to see the key image requirements for all the major social platforms.

Facebook

  • Your profile photo is representative of your brand. We recommend that is a consistent logo among all of your social media accounts. This image must be 180 x 180 pixels.
  • Cover photos are the banner behind your profile picture, and this should also be consistent across social platforms that allow for an image in this location. Cover photos should be 820 x 312 pixels, if it’s anything smaller than this your image will be stretched and distorted.
  • Images that are shared in a post, for example a blog post news update, have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels.

Twitter

  • Twitter profile pictures have a recommended size of a 400 x 400 pixel square. Keep in mind that the actual Twitter profile picture appears as a circle, so we advise you to have the proper spacing around your logo so nothing is cut off.
  • Twitter also has a cover photo, which should be about 1500 x 1500 pixels for an image size. Pick an image that compliments your profile picture and make sure it is consistent across all platforms as well.
  • Photos in tweets, when expanded, appear at a maximum of 1024 x 512 pixels and a minimum of 440 x 220 pixels. Keep in mind that on mobile, the app collapses photos which could make for an awkward crop situation. Make sure your content is always centered horizontally to avoid odd cropping.

Instagram

  • Instagram profile pictures are small but powerful. These show any time you have a new story, in direct messages, and of course at the top of your profile page. The image size is recommended to be 110 x 110 pixels.
  • Your thumbnails for photos, or often referred to as your photo grid, will appear as 161 x 161 pixels. If you’re going for a certain aesthetic, the thumbnail size is an important one to keep in mind. Individual image uploads can be square or rectangular. Square photos image size is 1080 x 1080 pixels and rectangular images should use a 4:5 ratio.
  • Instagram stories are a must for your brand to remain relevant on the platform and also where you will have the most visibility. The recommended resolution for stories is 1080 x 1920 pixels or an aspect ratio of 9:16.

YouTube

  • Your profile image for YouTube should be the same consistent branding as your other social channels as mentioned above. The image size for YouTube profile picture is 800 x 800 pixels.
  • Attractive and engaging thumbnail images are crucial to success of your videos. For YouTube, make sure your thumbnail image size is 1,2080 x 720 pixels.
  • YouTube also allows for a cover image photo in addition to your profile image. The recommended image size here is 2,560 x 1,440 pixels.

Pinterest

  • On the Pinterest homepage, profile picture image sizes are 165 x 165 pixels.
  • It is recommended to use an image aspect ratio of 2:3 for pins.
  • Pins that are on the homepage or in a board will appear at 236 pixels wide. Once a pin is expanded, it has a minimum width of 600 pixels and the height of the image will scale proportionally.

LinkedIn

  • Your company logo is very important when it comes to the identification of your brand, of course. Make sure it’s visible with the image size of 300 x 300 pixels.
  • The company background image is similar to the cover photos on other platforms, where it takes up the entire top portion of your page. The recommended image size for your LinkedIn background image is 1,536 x 768 pixels.
  • Images in your content posts have a recommended size of 1,200 x 630 pixels. Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a professional social network platform with a large focus on building relationships with industry leaders. Make sure your posts are appropriate for this kind of audience and focus less on driving sales or website traffic.

*Data from Social Media Today

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Social Media Strategy: Where You Should Start

/in , , , /by

Has the current pandemic catapulted your small business into the world of social media advertising and e-commerce? In what is already an overwhelming time, starting from scratch on how you’re advertising your small business may seem like too much to take on. Onimod Global is here to help with a guide of where is the best place to start from scratch with a social media strategy.

Audit your current social presence.

Before you are in too deep strategizing about where you need to go, take some time to evaluate where you currently are.

  • Which networks are you currently active on?
  • Are your current platforms optimized (images, URL, bio, etc.)?
  • Which are the most successful for you?

Onimod Global offers a free digital audit that measures your online success in terms of SEO, social media influence, local business optimization, SEM breakdown, and more. Check it out further and get your very own custom digital score.

Define your type of business and ideal customer.

Are you service or product based? Are you primarily B2B or B2C? These are very important questions to determine which socials you need to be focused on creating content and advertisement campaigns for. Every business is unique, but there are industries that perform well on certain social channels versus others. For example, B2B businesses can focus more efforts on social media channels such as LinkedIn and YouTube versus Facebook. These platforms will give you the opportunity to reach your target market in a more direct way. For example, if your company is selling a type of consultancy service, your content is a better match to a professional networking channel such as LinkedIn. B2C businesses, where you’re selling a product or service to anyone and everyone, this can be very successful on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. On these channels, you are able to show your product and service to a target audience that is more likely to convert into sales.

Even the best marketers will fail if they are marketing to the wrong audience. Use the following criteria to help you come up with a highly focused persona of a potential customer:

  • Age
  • Job Title
  • Location
  • Pain points (where your business offers their solution)
  • Most used social network

Create useful and engaging content.

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet.” – Bill Gates

This is arguably the most attractive step of creating your social media strategy. From this post, you now know there are several steps that take place before getting to this point. Your social media content needs to always have a purpose behind it. Decide in your team what your mission is for social media. For example, it could be informing and educating your customers on the respective industry and its services. This ensures the content you curate will be attractive and engaging to your audience.

Here are a few examples of content that you can create:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • Interviews
  • Company News
  • Infographics

Remember that quality content is far more important than the quantity of what you post. However, it is crucial that you consider creating high quality, engaging content as a top priority. Experts at Onimod Global strongly recommend creating a content calendar with specific topics and types of content. This will also serve of great use when looking back on the month and reviewing the performance of your content.

Track and analyze.

This is the most important step, a lot of content creation is about trial and error. Let all of your decisions, both in content and in your business in general, be data driven. Social media strategies are never set in stone, make sure you are always evolving.

Are you in need of more assistance with your social media strategy? Onimod Global is here to help with a custom social media strategy and content plan.  Check out the dozens of case studies on our site by clicking here!

More from Onimod Global

Make sure to stay tuned to Onimod Global news for part 2 of this week’s series and learn all about e-commerce and online marketplaces going live Thursday. To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

 

 

How to Develop a Social Media Content Calendar

/in , , /by

Many marketers swear by the use of monthly content calendars. While there are real benefits of using content calendars, they still have their pitfalls. They require a lot of time and effort, and sometimes those things can’t easily be spared. Not only that, but working strictly off a set calendar isn’t always the solution for everyone. 

Whether or not you need a content calendar depends on a variety of factors, but if you discover a way to develop one that allows for flexibility and creativity, the benefits can be endless. 

The Pros of Using Content Calendars

Consisting Posting 

Planning your posts ahead of time ensures new content gets pushed out regularly. Having your topics picked out ahead of time saves time and allows for more than one person to manage social platforms. Regular content dispersion is important because it means you avoid the typical ups and downs in traffic and audience that come from inconsistent posting. Through a content schedule, you spread out your content throughout the month, setting yourself up as a resource to be trusted.

Diverse Content 

When you come up with content topics everyday, it’s only a matter of time before they get repetitive. You’ll most likely revert to the same topics and posting style when you’re struggling to come up with something. When you lay all content out for a month, you’ll be able to better spread out certain topics, preventing you from becoming predictable and boring. 

Better Teamwork 

If more than one person works on a blog or controls a social media account, having a content schedule is key. Assigning topics will become much easier, and you’ll be able to do it much further in advance. It will also prevent any overlap in content and make sure everyone’s on the same page. 

The Cons of Using Content Calendars

Can Restrict Creativity and Flexibility

While careful planning and deadlines are what makes content calendars work, too many restrictions can stifle creativity and eliminate flexibility. Sometimes planning your blog content ahead of time can turn out to be counterproductive when your company’s goals change, roles shift, or strategies get re-imagined. It can discourage your team to think outside of the box. It may also prevent from responding to timely or relevant topics, which can make your brand seem out-of-the-loop. 

Can Seem Disingenuous 

Along with the inability to respond to relevant topics, scheduled content may also come across as disingenuous. For example, you might have scheduled a tweet about nice weather, just as a natural disaster hits your community. So while automated posts save time, they can come across as stale because they’re written days or weeks before it’s actually published. 

More Demanding 

Content calendars are only successful if the whole marketing team is on board and uses it. All the time you spend carefully planning out when, where and what to post ends up being a waste of time, if no one is actually sticking to the schedule. A way to combat this is by making sure that the calendar is easily accessible to all team members and easy to use. Also make adhering to the calendar a priority for your marketing team and hold people accountable for the content they are responsible for.

As we said before, content calendars are not for everyone. If you have a small team or don’t publish content that often, they may be more work than they’re worth. However, they can be very beneficial to many marketing teams. 

Creating content calendars can seem daunting, but they don’t have to be. If you’ve established that this is something that would be helpful for your business, here is a process that allows you to quickly and effectively produce weekly content, that allows for flexibility and creativity. 

How to Develop a Content Calendar that Allows for Creativity

(via Marketing Land)

Identify Key Audiences 

Think of four different customers that serve as examples of types of customers that serve as examples of the types of customers you’d like to land for your company moving forward. Pinpoint each customer’s unique challenges, emotions and values, as you’ll want the content to speak to those needs.

Identify Solutions

After identifying four key audiences, think of three solutions your business can offer to these four audiences. This could include different services, products, or value propositions. Then match up each of your three solutions with each of your four audiences. 

  • Solution A for Audience 1
  • Solution B for Audience 1
  • Solution C for Audience 1
  • Solution A for Audience 2
  • And so on until you have twelve broad topics to explore

Identify Categories 

The final step is to come up with a list of four content strategies that will allow you to approach each solution/customer pairing from a variety of perspectives. Some examples include:

  • Expert Q&As
  • Step-by-step Guides
  • Industry News
  • Listicles
  • Case Studies

Combine this list of categories with your 12 solutions pairings to generate 48 unique topics for a full year of content. The first example could be: Expert Q&A that addresses Audience 1’s challenges from the perspective of what Solution A offers. Try to address each audience in one post per month. That way, each month, you will address and provide content for all four audiences. 

Marketing Land advises to keep in mind that content isn’t just supposed to be brand promotions. Your content is supposed to provide value to readers. 

Final Thoughts 

Today, almost all businesses release some form of digital content. While calendars may not be worth it for everyone, they can be very beneficial for those that need them. If you think your company could benefit from a content calendar, but don’t know where to start, consider outsourcing a digital marketing company.

At Onimod Global we create monthly content calendars for our clients. As experts in social media marketing we know how to create visibility for companies in places their customers are searching, interacting, and engaging. . Take a look at how we’ve helped others, and learn more about what we can do for you.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s New Features to Reduce Time Spent on Non-Selling Activities

/in /by

LinkedIn rolled out new updates to its Sales Navigator platform that attempt to cut down on the day-to-day administrative tasks to build stronger relationships with customers and prospects, and close more deals. 

The update includes an easier way to tie in CRMS, a better way to package and share content within the platform, and enhancements to search and usage reporting metrics. These features could prove to be extremely valuable to marketers, as they are designed to streamline sales tasks and create more efficient workflow processes for sales teams using LinkedIn for identifying and prospecting new customers. 

New Process for Adding Leads to Salesforce 

The first update eliminates the need to switch back and forth between two platforms when adding contacts to Salesforce accounts. 

“With the click-of-a-button in your Sales Navigator lead page or lead list, you can now write-back publicly available information about your lead into your Salesforce CRM (and soon-to-come for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales) quickly and easily without leaving Sales Navigator.” LinkedIn explained in their update announcement. 

Salesforce also ensures there are no duplicate leads by checking the contacts in your database and flagging any issues, ensuring CRM cleanliness. 

Features to Increase Workflow 

  • Smart Links: Allow you to quickly and easily package and share content within your Sales Navigator workflow, track viewing behavior, and gain insights on who is engaging with your content. 
  • Company Growth Alerts: An alert in Sales Navigator that notifies you if a company on your saved accounts list has added multiple job postings: “Indicating that the company is growing — a signal that there may be new opportunities that the sales organization could pursue.”

Features to Reduce Search Time 

  • Save Account Searches: Once you find an account search that works, you can easily save it and avoid having to repopulate the account queries every time you log into Sales Navigator.  You will be automatically updated any time a new Account meets your search criteria. 
  • Share Lead Searches: Once you identify the perfect lead search query, you can now share that search with other teammates with a Sales Navigator contract.

Greater Customization Capabilities

LinkedIn goes on to say “no one knows what you need more than you.” Because of that they have updated Usage Reporting and Mobile Experience to have more customizable properties. Users can now opt-out of LinkedIn.com activity in their personal Sales Navigator settings — removing any of their own LinkedIn.com activities from metrics like days active, searches performed and profile views in Usage Reporting. Along with these latest updates, Sales Navigator “Team” customers are getting the refreshed usage reporting features announced last quarter that include new navigation, metrics and data filters. Lastly, in addition to making the mobile app available to all product supported languages, users are now able to customize their mobile experience by filtering the alerts they want to receive. 

Final Thoughts 

LinkedIn has been rolling out a number of updates over the past year that have continued to increase its marketing capabilities. It has become a strong contender in the paid social space, and is an extremely valuable tool for many brands. These new features to Sales Navigator help to streamline sales tasks and create more efficient workflow processes for sales teams. 

If you’re new to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator platform or having difficulties with any paid social, Onimod Global can help. At Onimod Global we’re experts in SEM and social media marketing. We’ve recently been rolling out brand new LinkedIn campaigns for a few of our clients, and have started producing a few results. We understand that LinkedIn is not an appropriate advertising platform for all brands or all campaigns. Having the correct brand positioning is essential, and with our expertise we know exactly where you and your ads need to be. Learn more about what we do, or become a client today! 

Is Marketing on Pinterest Right for My Business?

/in /by

Most businesses understand the importance of marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, ect. Pinterest is a social platform that’s often overlooked due to the assumption it’s just a place moms go to find recipes and DIY inspiration. Actually, Shopify found it was the second highest source for referral traffic and that 93% of pinners use the platform for research or making purchases. Not only are users extremely active, but Pinterest has rolled out a number of new features over the past year increasing the platform’s marketing abilities. 

Pinterest is becoming a great tool for digital marketing, but just as all social platforms, it’s not ideal for all businesses. Discover more about Pinterest, its marketing capabilities, and whether or not it’s right for your business. 

The Benefits of Using Pinterest for Business 

Driving Traffic to Your Website 

Pinterest has the ability to drive mass amounts of traffic directly to your company website. Research has found that Pinterest actually drives more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube combined. This is due to its unique design. Every image placed on a board is automatically hyperlinked to its original source. To be directed to your website, all users have to do is click directly on the image of the pin. 

Using Pinterest regularly can also help drive more organic traffic by increasing SEO rankings. This is partially due to contents’ ability to last longer on the platform. Generally, the most popular posts on other social sites are whatever is most recent. Pins gain popularity over time as they’re actively searched for, found, and re-pinned. This can help to be a powerful tool in driving you up Google’s rankings and making you more discoverable. 

Engage with High-Intent Customers 

Since last year, users increased 28%, to 322 million active monthly users. Not only are there more people using Pinterest than ever, the majority of them are high-intent, ready to purchase audience members. 98% of users report trying new things they discover on the platform, 93% have used it to research, plan for, or make purchases, and 39% of users are active shoppers. Users are more likely to purchase products they come across organically on Pinterest than any other social platform due to users proactively searching, rather than just scrolling through a feed. 

Build Brand Image and Authority 

Visual content is more important than ever, as 62% of Gen Zers and millennials say they like searching by images. Pinterest is the perfect platform to tell customers who you are and what you’re about, visually. You have the opportunity to reinforce your brand image by regularly appearing on users’ home pages, creating a variety of boards that reflect your identity, or sharing outside relevant content. These practices can help to build credibility and brand authority in your niche industry. 

What Types of Businesses Should Use Pinterest?  

Whether Pinterest is a good fit for your business is ultimately up to you, but there seem to be some that perform better than others. In general, it’s easier for B2C companies to market on Pinterest, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for B2B. Clothing, cosmetic, food, home decor, and DIY’s are the types of content that seems to perform best. While the majority of Pinterest users are women ages 25-54, 50% of all new sign-ups are men. 

Another statistic that’s important to keep in mind is that 40% of Pinterest users have a household income of $100K per year or more. This shows that the platform attracts those with large amounts of disposable income with the ability to spend on luxury products. 

That being said, any business has the potential to be successful on Pinterest. Just as with any other marketing tool, success is highly dependent on your strategy. The key is having the ability to consistently create captivating, high-quality, visual content that’s valuable to users. A good pin has: 

  • Vertical imagery. Majority of pinners are on mobile. Shoot for a 2:3 aspect ratio so your image doesn’t get truncated, while making it as high-quality as possible. 
  • Descriptive copy. Explain what users are looking at and entice them to learn more.
  • Text overlay. Including a headline that reinforces your message.
  • Tasteful branding. Include your logo so your brand doesn’t get lost in feeds.

How to Get Started 

When getting started, make sure you set up a business account, rather than a personal. This will give you access to analytics and other exclusive marketing tools. If you already have a personal account, Pinterest allows you to convert it to a business profile here. It’s important to keep branding consistent with your site and other social media accounts. If it’s available, try to use the same username. If you have them, you should also connect your Instagram, YouTube, and/or Etsy accounts. Doing so ensures pins from these sites will be attributed to your business. Plus, you’ll also be able to track related analytics. Once your account is set up, you can start creating boards and adding pins. If you plan on running paid ads, you can then set up your ads manager account as well. 

How We Can Help 

At Onimod Global we are experts in social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do, or contact us today!

Twitter Marketing: Is it Right for Your Brand?

/in , /by

Twitter has proven to be an incredibly powerful marketing tool for certain brands. It can be a great platform to increase awareness, engage with customers, and grow your business, but it isn’t right for everyone. Each social network is unique in its targeting, reach, and overall marketing abilities. When making the decision whether or not a specific platform is right for your business, an analysis of both yourself and the platform needs to be done.

What to consider before marketing your business on Twitter: 

Are you B2C or B2B? 

This is one of the most important factors that should go into developing a social media marketing strategy. In general, those searching on social media are at the very top of the sales funnel, but there are exceptions. Twitter is usually best for B2C companies, but it can work for B2B companies with the appropriate tactics. It’s becoming a central discovery hub for consumers, making it a great platform for displaying expertise, products, and creativity. News, retail, e-commerce, fashion, finance, travel, hospitality, sports, health and wellness are some of the top performing industries on Twitter. 

Who is your audience? 

This is the number one thing that should be considered before deciding to join any social media platform. If your ideal audience is millennials, Twitter is a strong choice, as 40% use it. As age increases, the percentage of use decreases. 27% of 30 – 49 year olds are users and 21% of 50 – 64 year olds are users. That doesn’t necessarily mean Twitter is a bad platform for reaching an older audience. It just means your actual strategy on Twitter would be different. It’s also important to note that 42% of users access the site daily. 

What is your brand’s persona? 

Establishing a well-defined brand voice is essential for Twitter strategy. Brand voice should be original, convey a message, reflect core values, and resonate with your audience in a personal way. Companies that convey their Twitter account in a lighthearted way generally have a leg up than those that keep it serious. Twitter users are most encouraging, engaging, and creative of all other social networks. Content that’s fun, snarky, and relaxed will always perform better on this platform. This also goes into deciding whom will be doing the tweeting for your company. It is possible to have more than one person running the account, but it’s essential to make sure they’re all in sync. 

What is your overall social media goal? 

If you only want to use Twitter to gain followers, promote yourself, and don’t care about what others have to say, it’s probably not the platform for you. This isn’t an account you can just put on autopilot. Regular engagement and interaction is vital for Twitter success. Scheduling tweets and never checking back is a huge missed opportunity. To maximize reach and keep your audience engaged it’s essential to check activity often, retweet relevant content, and jump in on trending conversations. Twitter is best for building relationships with customers, as it’s one of the most personable social platforms. Many companies utilize it for customer service inquiries, as it’s the best means of contact for many reasons. There are no hold times, it’s more informal, it’s public, and it’s in real time. Companies have the opportunity to respond to complaints immediately, which means problems can be solved that much faster. Since other users can see this happen as well, it showcases excellent customer service and may even save you from repeating them in the future. 

Final Thoughts 

Twitter can be a great platform for marketing and presents unique opportunities for both companies and customers, though it’s not for everyone. It’s simple to use, but takes frequent attention. Finally, it’s important to note that Twitter, just as all social media, is not an ultimate marketing solution. It should be used as a tactic, working in conjunction with other tools to support your overall marketing strategy. 

How We Can Help 

At Onimod Global we are experts in social media marketing. We know which platforms are best for brands, and create visibility for brands where customers are searching, interacting, and ultimately converting. Find out more about we do here, or contact us today here.

We Are Ten! Celebrating a Decade of Innovative Digital Solutions

/in /by

Onimod Global is officially 10 years old! We’re celebrating a decade of providing expert and innovative digital marketing solutions for our clients. Working with companies of all sizes, in many industries across the globe has given us the opportunity to develop and perfect many different digital marketing strategies. 

We’re thankful for you, our wonderful clients, for putting your trust in our expertise, and allowing us to grow and perfect your marketing business goals year after year. With an innovative vision and a lot of hard work, Onimod Global quickly became one of the Midwest’s, America’s and the Globe’s fastest-growing digital marketing & SEO companies. Now spanning across six continents, our clients come to us – and stay with us – due to our proven business goal satisfaction rate and unique consultative approach. 

Over the last 10 years we have learned a lot about the changing face of digital marketing, but these are our core digital strategies we wanted to share with you. 

 

Our Core Digital Strategies:

SEO

Search Engine Optimization has always been our core attribute and the pillar of our digital marketing strategy. SEO has become vital in achieving long-term visibility for websites, especially with the continued expansion of new internet and search engine users. We’ve learned how to develop search engine optimization campaigns that drive organic traffic through increasing natural rankings across all major search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. We accomplish this in a variety of ways. Some of our best practices include improving website crawlability and indexability, developing high quality content, and implementing proper metrics. 

Crawlability describes the search engine’s ability to access and crawl content on a page. Indexability refers to the search engine’s ability to analyze and add a page to its index. While these two elements are not mutually exclusive, it is extremely beneficial to have both for a site. If there is an issue with either, it prohibits search engines from analyzing and adding pages to their indexes. This ultimately makes it more difficult for your site to come up in search results. Our strategy starts with making sure that is not the case. We make sure there are no dead or broken links and that a site’s robot.txt file is properly updated. Following fixing all technical issues we start focusing on content optimization. Rankings continue to improve when quality content is consistently added to the site. This includes practices such as dropping relevant keywords into appropriate site places, using video and images when possible, and blog sharing. 

While these elements are extremely important, consistently measuring success is just as, if not more important. How will you know if your efforts are effective if you never check your progress? Measuring SEO success goes further than just tracking traffic and conversions. Time on page, pages per visit, bounce rate, scroll depth, and backlinks are all data points that give valuable insight to SEO performance.

SEM

Paid advertising across all search engines and social media platforms has become one of our specialties. Over our 10 years of SEM work we have become a trusted Google Partner, meaning we are a digital marketing company that is trusted by Google and excel with their products. We have learned to optimize our SEM strategy in a number of ways. A few of these include utilizing keywords and negative keywords, landing pages, and A/B testing all efforts. 

Finding relevant keywords and correct match type is essential for any paid search campaign. Irrelevant or low search volume keywords can result in a low quality score, which can prevent your ads from getting shown in search results. Generally, we suggest using on optimization for conversion match type, but it can differ depending on the campaign’s objective. Finding effective keywords takes a lot of trial and error. You want to use as many words or phrases as possible that align with what users are actually searching for. The use of negative keywords is important as well. You don’t want your ads firing for searches that are completely irrelevant to your services. We consistently watch the searches our ads fire for, ensuring we don’t waste budget on something that will never turn into a real customer or lead. 

Landing pages are something we suggest almost 100% of the time. Sending PPC traffic to a homepage can be a huge mistake. We believe that every search request is an opportunity and users are always looking for immediate solutions. If a user has already went as far as to click on your ad, make it easy as possible for them to actually convert. Sending them to your homepage means they will have to spend even more time searching through your site for what they actually want. If they don’t immediately find it, they’ll likely bounce and search elsewhere.

A/B testing is something that is widely underutilized when it comes to all aspects of websites and campaigns. You never really know how something is performing if it has nothing else to be compared to. We try to create different variations of ads and landing pages with various headings, keywords, body copy, placements, etc. To get clear results from tests it’s important to remember to only change one factor at a time and let it run long enough to gain accurate results. 

Social 

Mobile and social media have now established themselves as indispensable parts of the marketing mix. We utilize social media marketing to create social synergy for our clients. Social synergy is all about having visibility in the social spaces your consumers are searching, interacting, and engaging. The reason creating social positioning is so crucial is because it is now a great driver of leads and sales. An integrated social media platform can enhance marketing campaign effectiveness, help improve brand building across the enterprise, and make a real impact on sales and the bottom line. Integrated social capability brings another great benefit by keeping the enterprise updated with the latest innovations in social media. Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are constantly innovating and updating their collaboration tools, content-sharing formats, etc. With integrating social capability, customers don’t need to change business functions in sales or marketing to catch up with these changes.

We help our clients leverage the power of their content to elevate their audience and customer base in dramatic ways. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. For content to be effective it must be consistent and high quality. We create and stick to monthly content calendars that guide our blog and post topics, which tags are used, where everything is shared, etc. Not only should the content you’re sharing be consistent, but it should have a purpose. Content should be based on questions potential customers might search for. The more direct and detailed the answer is, the better it will rank. It should also be actionable. Inform your audience about specific steps to take or resources they need to carry out the advice you’re giving. Content should always include a clear and a strong CTA, because the end goal is driving sales. In today’s much-hyped world of social media marketing, integrated social capability can make a direct and positive impact on the business.

What We Do Best 

We have a lot of digital strategies and solutions, expanding further than just SEO, SEM, and Social. But what we really do best is being our clients’ true marketing partner. Onimod Global can power entire corporate marketing departments or simply provide custom solutions for local businesses. We’re here for our clients 24 hours a day and live for the moment they’re in a pinch and need our help. We excel in customer service and serving as our clients consultative marketing team, delivering custom digital solutions client by client. 

Again, thank you to all our clients over the last 10 years, as without you, we would not be where we are today. 

More from Onimod Global

Learn more about what we do, take a look at some of our work, or become a client today! 

YouTube’s New “Video Reach” Campaign Capabilities

/in , /by

Earlier this week YouTube launched a new way to run video ad campaigns. Advertisers can now upload three different types of videos under one campaign, and it apparently cuts campaign costs by more than 20%. In the announcement, YouTube said they’re constantly working on better ways to help companies achieve their marketing goals—whether that’s to build awareness, shift perceptions, or drive a specific action. It should be a simpler and more effective way to drive reach while meeting target audiences in the places they’re watching.

 

Video Reach Campaigns 

Before, advertisers would have to make 3 separate campaigns for each video ad type. Now, they can use 6 second bumpers, skippable in-stream ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads in a single campaign. From there, Google’s machine learning will automatically serve the most efficient combination of these formats to help reach your audience at scale.

Bumper Ads: Non-skippable ads, 6 seconds or shorter that are shown before the video the user wishes to view. Bumper ads use target CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) bidding. You pay each time your ad is shown 1,000 times.

Skippable In-Stream Ads: The ad plays before, during, or after other videos and viewers have the option to skip after 5 seconds. These can appear on YouTube watch pages, on videos on partner sites, and apps in the Display Network. You have two bidding options, CPV or CPM. With CPV you pay when a viewer watches 30 seconds of your video (or the duration if it’s shorter than 30 seconds) or interacts with your video, whichever comes first. CPM bidding means you pay based on impressions. Skippable in-stream ads use CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) bidding, so you pay each time your ad is shown 1,000 times.

Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads: The non-skippable video ad is an ad format that may appear pre-, mid-, or post-roll while viewing partner content. They can be 15-20 seconds long and viewers must watch the ad before they’re able to watch the selected video. A smaller, 300 x 60-pixel ad may also be shown next to YouTube videos that show non-skippable video ads on desktop. They are sold on a CPM basis, and may generate higher CPMs than other ad formats on YouTube.

 

TrueView for Action Campaigns

For companies looking to build a full-funnel strategy, YouTube recommends using the video campaigns alongside a TrueView for action campaign. TrueView campaigns are built to drive leads and conversions by adding CTAs, headline text overlays, and an end screen to video ads. In the announcement, YouTube said that soon, TrueView for action ads will extend to the home feed, giving advertisers the opportunity to capture more high value leads. 

 

Masthead on TV Screens 

YouTube also announced it will be bringing mastheads to their fastest growing surface, the tv screen. According to YouTube, their daily watch time tops 250 million hours a day. It will be available as a reserved placement for advertisers to ensure brands can drive the visibility they need on the dates that matter most. They can be purchased on a CPM basis, with audience targeting capabilities, and cross-screen or single-screen Masthead buying options. YouTube believes the rich audio and visual experience brought by the TV screen will create an upper-funnel drive greater than ever before. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Some companies have already started adopting the new campaign strategies. Ford, being one of them, has reported strong results. In alpha tests, the automaker lowered their campaign cost over 20% compared to their past YouTube campaigns. These new capabilities take advertisers’ guesswork out of creating comprehensive campaigns that utilize a series of ads. YouTube is becoming a stronger and more strategic partner by focusing more on marketing objectives rather than media. 

 

More From Onimod Global 

To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here!