So, what is Instagram Stories all about?

Basically, it allows users to share photos and videos with their followers in a way that is extremely similar to Snapchat. Instagram users can now upload photos and 10 second videos, post them to their story and can even add text, drawings and emojis! And just like Snapchat, these “Instagram Stories” disappear after 24 hours. While Instagram Stories are not quite as advanced as Snapchat in terms of its customisation with geofilters, stickers and interactive lenses, Instagram Stories are incredibly easy to use and most definitely encourages engagement with the content!

It’s very clear to me that brand’s need to be ready to embrace this change – it’s a bold move but I can already see it becoming a daily part of my social media activity! Social media users are going to either shift some of their attention to Instagram Stories (meaning this spike in interaction with Instagram is a great opportunity for brands) or will spend more time on Snapchat and Twitter giving out about Facebook trying to copy Snapchat!

The challenge for brands includes:

• How do we create more content for yet another platform
• Where do we invest our time/content for best ROI
• How do we get our brand content into the top 5 stories on Instagram
• Will it be possible to promote content on Instagram Stories to ensure visibility? (I would put money on this by the way!)

It will be interesting to see how users respond, switch or remain within both platforms, and how brands would respond. Interesting to see if Instagram Stories eventually become a separate app (the way that Facebook Messenger broke from the pack) to directly compete with Snapchat?

Whether it’s Instagram or Snapchat stories, one thing’s for sure… this story between Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat is definitely one to watch!

The post What’s the story with Instagram Stories? appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

Download Easy Steps to Schedule a Facebook Post guide for FREE!

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Every business must produce and add original content to both website and social media accounts as part of their digital marketing strategy.

Content is an integral part of every digital marketing strategy. Social media marketing requires fresh, engaging content on a regular basis.

However, producing, publishing and promoting your content isn’t always easy. In fact, it is often one of the biggest challenges for businesses. It’s so important that businesses create original, shareworthy ideas and then market your content in order to encourage fans and followers to interact with your brand regularly. Creating and finding content to post on social media platforms can be incredibly challenging. It can be extremely frustrating when you can’t think of something clever, witty or engaging. It happens to the best of us!

So, how does a business post new, fresh and engaging content? Here are some Social Media Content Ideas for any business:

Facebook 

The most popular posts on Facebook are often photos. Taking good photos of products, location and your brand is a key element of your social media strategy. However, it’s a good idea to source photos from around the web too – just be sure to credit the owner!

1. Topical News – is there something trending online? What’s popular at the moment? Is it possible that you can use this news and keep it in relation to your brand and in line with your strategy?
2. Ask a question or fill in the blanks – post something leading and ask your fans to answer or fill in a missing word. This can lead to super interaction however caution is required as it should only be used occasionally.
3. Quotes and Motivation – sharing quotes as images are a fantastic way to encourage interaction on your Facebook posts.
4. Throwback Thursdays and FlashbackFridays are popular, fun posts on Facebook – find old photos of you, your company, the year your business was established and so on.
5. Behind the scenes – let your fans into your world. Share snaps of staff in their office, store room, shop floor, stocking shelves etc. Snap a picture of new delivers, new shipments, new products arriving or even new staff members – keep fans in the loop! By letting fans have a “sneak peek” they will have increased loyalty to your brand.
6. Event photos - If you have a special event or launch, create a photo album that talks about the event complete with preparation photos, live event updates and the aftermath. Make sure to encourage people to tag themselves in your photos.

Twitter

The key to twitter is writing something short, sweet and with a hook. It can be a great tool for building relationships and providing customer service and after sales support. Twitter can be used to build a buzz around events, promotions, product launches and new employee appointments – and so much more!

1. Facts, figures and statistics – try combining something factual with an article which backs it up and provides more information.
2. Ask a question – encourage people to reply to your question… then keep the conversation flowing!
3. Quotes and Motivation – sharing quotes on Twitter is a great way to encourage retweets and interactions. Don’t forget to keep the quote to less than 100 characters (if possible) so people can retweet and add a comment.
4. Topical News – is there something trending online? What’s popular at the moment? Is it possible that you can use this news and keep it in relation to your brand and in line with your strategy?
5. Expert Opinion – comment on current affairs in the industry your business is part of, share top tips and insights and share engaging content in relation to your industry.
6. Hashtags – don’t forget to use hashtags to your advantage. Join a twitter chat, talk about something that is trending or even use your own unique hashtag for your event to build buzz and awareness.Many of these engaging content ideas can be used for multiple platforms. However, remember not to automatically post the same message on every platform. While it’s ok to share the same content, but make sure you edit each message to suit each specific platform. Never automatically post content from Twitter to Facebook and vice versa.

   Remember, the key to any social media strategy is to post engaging content that your target market will find engaging in order to make a sale. After all, we’re all using social media to sell stuff, right?

The post Social Media Content Ideas for every business appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

If this amount of content is being shared on Facebook, how will YOUR customers see YOUR content in the busy timeline of information i.e. their newsfeed?

While it’s somewhat entertaining to see the amount of activity in a very short space of time, it’s also important for businesses to note. The content we add to the busy newsfeed needs to stand-out, engage, entertain and inform.

Do you have a content strategy? You need one!

The post What happens in a Facebook minute? appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

It’s important to outline your marketing goals from the outset. Some marketing goals include generating leads, increasing sales, improving customer retention, and growing your business.

Social media isn’t an isolated “thing”. It should help you accomplish all of these goals. But if you don’t have a social media strategy, then you’ll have an “active” social media account and little else to show for it.

Here are some social marketing tips you can use to help grow your business.

1. Answer the Why:  Why are you blogging? Why are you on Twitter? Why are you using social media? Here are the answers you are probably thinking of right now:
   (a) increase brand awareness by growing your reach
   (b) build customer loyalty by providing more support
   (c) increase sales by getting more people to purchase, more frequently.
   If you can’t answer the why, then don’t even start your social media activity!

2. Ignore Your Competition: Trying to benchmark other people’s amount of Fans and Followers is silly and frankly just egotistical. You’ll start making bad decisions because you’re trying to “keep up”. The best tactical ideas and campaigns haven’t happened in your industry yet. So set out your social media strategy to figure out what new, untapped opportunities you can seize and gain an early lead. Look at what businesses are doing in other industries and try to experiment with similar tactics.
3. Don’t Be on Every Social Network: Community management will drain all of your resources, especially if you don’t have marketing departments like larger companies might have. Contrary to popular belief, social media isn’t free! Each social network you manage will cost you exponentially more time, money and energy. It takes tremendous resources to do it properly, and has an enormous opportunity cost. So prioritise one or two networks and focus on strategically developing these.
4. Be Effective: Social media is wonderful, but people confuse busyness with effectiveness. Start with a goal, reverse engineer how you’re going to reach that goal, identify your highest activities, prioritise and set deadlines, be disciplined and accountable. Be effective.
5. Be a Publisher: Digital marketing can’t exist without content. No SEO. No email marketing. No social media. That means you’re in the media business. So you better start learning how to create valuable content. Create content, provide expertise, or use adverts to put yourself in front of communities of people – and give them the chance to find you.
6. Ignore Trends: Trends are like waves in the ocean, they come and they go. Pinterest might work for some businesses. But for others, it’s a waste of time. For your business, it probably has the wrong kind of traffic, not enough users, and a demographic mismatch. Instead, focus and invest in the fundamentals – like your blog, email marketing and your main social media accounts.
7. Create a voice: People don’t want to connect with faceless corporations. They want to connect with real humans. But a lot of companies still don’t understand this. No one will like, trust or respect your company in the long run if they can’t talk to a human, in a timely manner.
8. Stand out from the crowd:  Why are you in business? Why are you using social media? People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Think about the special companies that you like and admire. They start with “Why”. They tap into a bigger cause than themselves, and that emotionally connects with people. If you only sell “What” you do, then you’re going to be stuck selling commodities and you’ll always compete on price. Answer the why!
9. Send an email: Simply put… Email marketing is still the most profitable online marketing channel. 
10. People Talking About You: Facebook’s EdgeRank was designed to keep companies from spamming their “fans”. So, it only allows you to reach the fans that actively engage with your brand. “People Talking About This” is the closest metric you have to increase your “viral reach”. The higher that number goes, the better chance you have of reaching more people. And the bigger your page will grow because you’ll start reaching more “friends of fans”. Get people talking about you – get them liking, commenting and generally interacting with your Page.

Social media is much more than “engaging in the conversation”. It’s a new way of doing things, and a new set of tools to help you do it. But the same marketing fundamentals apply. You need to gain attention, build trust, and keep people engaged longer.

Because in addition to growing your “social media presence”, you’ll also be able to get more traffic, bring in more leads and create more happy customers.

Be a social business, not just a business that uses social media!

The post Ten simple but effective ways to enhance your social media marketing appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

App Requests 

So you might enjoy running an imaginary online farm or café, but believe it or not people have real farms and cafés to run and are fed up receiving your regular app requests! Unless you have discussed in detail your love for Farmville with a fellow Facebook friend we advise you to avoid sending those app requests. You might be only asking them to be your neighbour on a virtual plot of farming land but the reality is almost everyone hates app requests.

Cryptic Status Updates

We’ve all been guilty of it at some stage and we can all spot a Cryptic Status Updater a mile off. It begins with an open ended statement suggesting the person is happy, angry or sad but does not disclose the crucial details, prompting others to ask a series of questions to find out what happened. At the end of the day we all want to know what happened, but the majority of us are slow to ask and will wait for someone else to come along, spot the status and take the bait!

Adding To Random Groups

It’s no secret that Facebook is a great way to bring people together, old friends from school or members of a GAA club but when a group chat is used to round up as many people as possible and ask them to do something, people get annoyed. People who create these groups generally have good intentions and want to reach as many people as possible with their endeavour but the reality is we don’t want to receive 150 notifications from this group chat and by the time we have scrolled all the way back to the start to find out what it is about we are not in a very charitable mood and are simply bored and frustrated!

The Relationship Update(s)

Don’t get us wrong, we are very happy for you and your new found happiness, but we are not however fans of receiving an update every time there is a smile, a present, dinner or a trip to the cinema. Remember your Facebook friends list comprises of family, friends, friend’s family members, co-workers, friends of friends and strangers who simply want to be your friend on Facebook and don’t want a subscription service to your relationship.

Share if you know someone guilty of any of the above!

The post 4 Most Annoying Facebook Habits We Are All Guilty Of appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

Well, this blog is here to explain what is happening every time you update your Facebook page, why it is happening and how you can improve your Facebook organic reach.

Let me begin by explaining a few things:

1. Reach: Post reach is the number of unique people who saw your post. Your post counts as reaching someone when it’s shown in News Feed. Figures are for the first 28 days after a post was created and include people viewing your post on desktop and mobile.
2. Organic Reach vs Paid Reach: The reach of a specific post depends on how people engage with it.

• Organic reach refers to the total number of unique people who saw your post in News Feed or on your Page, including people who saw it from a story shared by a friend when they liked, commented on or shared your post, answered a question or responded to an event
• Paid reach: The number of unique people who saw your post through an advert, boosted post or sponsored story.

1. EdgeRank: This algorithm is often referred to as EdgeRank. It is extremely important that you understand how EdgeRank works in order to have a successful Facebook page.
   InsideFacebook.com describes EdgeRank as “the algorithm that determines what items populate your News Feed. With all the friends people have and pages they like, most users would be overwhelmed to see all of the activity generated by these connections. Facebook, therefore, assigns a value to every possible story that could end up in the feed. This value is based on affinity, weight and time. Affinity is the relationship between the user and the page or friend that created an item. Weight is affected by the type of story, for instance, whether it is a photo upload or a comment on another person’s status. Facebook tends to value rich media content and often when it introduces something new like Questions; it temporarily weights activity from that feature higher. The third factor affecting EdgeRank is how recently an action was taken.”

Example of the reach when I posted a picture to my Facebook Page:

As you can see from the picture on the left, I shared a short text update with a photo. It got 5 likes. Only 72 people saw it out of 350.
What did I do wrong?

What happens when a Facebook Page posts an update?

When a Facebook page posts an update, shares a picture etc. only a portion of fans actually see this. This has always been the case however, in recent times it has become a serious problem for businesses.

Facebook page owners must first recognise that their content isn’t guaranteed to been seen by all fans and so it’s very important that content is interesting, engaging and shareable!

Complaining about how Facebook wants everyone to advertise isn’t going to solve the situation you are in. You have two options: pay the advertising or fix the problem.

If you would like to set up some Facebook advertising you can do it here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage

If you’d like to solve the problem… read on….

So, you’ve probably heard that Facebook organic reach is dead. I don’t believe it is. In fact, I know it’s not. It’s well and truly alive! The problem is your Facebook marketing strategy.

Why is this happening?

I believe that organic reach is down because people have more friends and like more pages and so the News Feed is jam packed with updates and news. Of course Facebook want businesses to advertise more too!

How do I maximise my Facebook Page’s reach?

Having worked on client Facebook pages over the last few months, I have clearly seen that if your Facebook Reach is down, it isn’t because Facebook is penalizing you.

Your Reach is down because your Facebook marketing strategy is poor or even non-existent.

So, how do you fix the problem and increase your organic reach?

1. CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT!
   It is so important that you have a content strategy. Plan in advance what you are going to say, when you are going to say it, why you are saying it and who you are saying it to. Remember my 80/20 rule of thumb about content. 80% should be fun, engaging and informative while the other 20% can be promotional, calls to action.
2. Post regularly and consistently
   It’s so important that you post to your page regularly. That doesn’t necessarily mean every day, but a few times a week should do! It varies depending on the page however even if it is only once a week, then make sure you are updating your page once a week, every week.
3. If spending money on Facebook ads, make sure they are targeted
   Running Facebook ads is a very handy way to promote your page among your target audience. Be sure that you run ads that are set up correctly and are targeted specifically. This will mean that any new fans to the page will have an interest and won’t just be liking it because it showed up in their timeline and then never interacting with it!
4. Don’t put all your eggs in the Facebook basket
   At this stage, you should also be using other digital marketing tools such as email marketing, blogging, video blogging and even using other social media platforms perhaps LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat or Vine!
   If you use Facebook as your only form of online marketing, it’s time you reviewed your marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook reach has drastically dropped and it is very frustrating for Facebook business page owners, myself included! However, complaining about it is never going to fix it. So, review what you are currently doing and adapt!

Have you noticed a difference on your Facebook page? Has the reach decreased dramatically?

The post The Ultimate Guide to Improving your Facebook Page Reach without spending a cent! appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

Starting on February 20, the names of these page admins will show next to their posts and comments. This will be visible to anyone with an admin role on your Page. Right now, Facebook don’t show which page admins posted/commented. Soon, the page admins will be able to see which page admin posted/commented. The admin name will not be made visible to the public just yet, however I think this will happen in time!

Here’s what Facebook have said about it: 

You may see this notification pop up on your Facebook page in the coming days:

Have you seen this update on your page yet? 

The post Latest update to Facebook Pages – Admin Names Displayed appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

It’s important that businesses realise that they need to do some planning and have a strategy before jumping in and posting random updates on Facebook and Twitter! If brands are going to be successful using social media to boost their businesses, a social media strategy is key. People often get blinded by the excitement of having new social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube that they do not realise they need to plan, set goals and measure results to be successful.

Digital marketing is a constant process. Building a website is just the beginning; keeping it updated with good quality interesting content is the challenge! Sending an email marketing campaign at Christmas is great, but why not send one more regularly and build up that relationship with your readers?

One of the things I do for my clients is creating detailed digital marketing and social media strategy and marketing plans for their business. So, I want to share some tips that I think will help you build your social media strategy:

1. Choose the best platforms for your business:
   If you are a small business with very little resources then maybe consider using one social media platform and do it well. Remember, it is better to be really good at one social media site than be weak on many! Consistency and quality matter more than being on each and every social media platform. Pick one or two social media channels and do them well first and then you can add in more as you go. If you only have time to manage one social media site, you might consider focusing in on Facebook. It is the largest social media site with 1.1 billion users and that is probably reason enough to pick Facebook if you only have time to manage one site.
2. Allocate the resources required:
   Setting up a Facebook page, twitter account or Pinterest profile is the easy part. After that you have to create and post great content, grow your community, engage with your audience, support other people’s communities, keep up with site changes, etc. Who is going to be responsible for these platforms?
3. Set goals and choose a Timeframe: 
   When I ask people about their goals for social media, I usually get one of two answers; “More Sales” or “Ehm, well everyone else is using Facebook so I kind of felt I should too”.
   You need goals so that your social media marketing is focused and effective. I recommend starting with big, wide reaching goals first and then breaking those bigger goals down into smaller pieces and establishing performance benchmarks and timelines for each piece. So, here is an example. A business I met with recently said ”I want to use Facebook to boost my business”. How do you know if social media is working? Instead, I suggested to the client that they aim to “develop a Facebook strategy to drive 50 new potential customers to my online store in the next 3 months”. Automatically their focus was on marketing activities and a social media strategy to support that goal.
4. Carry out real time analysis:
   By measuring and analyzing your social media marketing efforts in real-time, you will track overall progress to your larger goals. However, it also highlights what is working and what is not. By knowing what isn’t working, you can make the necessary adjustments and do more of what IS working!
5. Create a content calendar as part of your content strategy:
   My rule of thumb is the 80:20 rule. 80% of your content should be interesting, useful, relative to your brand but entertaining and so on. The other 20% of your content can be promotional material – although I would also be cautious about how you word promotional posts. If you post promotional updates more than 20% of the time, people will consider you a “spammer” or push marketer and will either unlike your Facebook page, unfollow you on Twitter or worse still stop shopping with you! So, what are you going to post the other 80% – 90% of the time? The answer is things that are interesting, motivational, funny, useful or otherwise have VALUE to your community. How often are you going to post? What times of the day and days of the week are you going to post? A content strategy and plan answers all of these questions!
6. Develop your brand’s tone of voice:
   Work on figuring out your rand’s persona, tone, purpose and language.
7. Carry out regular analysis:
   Use tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter analytics or other tools like Hootsuite, SocialBro, Raven etc. Monitor social media activity by keeping track of activity, influence and interactions. Other metrics worth monitoring include downloads, installs, views, clicks, sign ups and traffic referrals. Don’t forget to monitor strategic objective metrics such as sales, customer service and brand awareness.
8. Be social, be fun, take risks and do more:
   While being informative is hugely important for a brand to communicate their message to consumers, it’s also important to remember that people use social media in order to be entertained and informed.

Do you have a social media strategy in place? If so, what works best for you? Do you schedule posts and tweets?

Download the Social Media Strategy Presentation for FREE

The post 8 Tips for Creating a Social Media Strategy appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

Regardless of what type of business you have, if you are using Facebook you MUST have a fan page. Too many businesses are using personal profiles – this can cause multiple problems, as well as running the risk of the profile being closed down!

So, why use a Facebook Page?

1. Branding: Fan pages allow you to brand your business, use your logo and customize your cover photo, tabs and content just as you would with a website. With this extremely valuable tool available to you, you can keep your “brand” consistent across the board as it relates to all aspects of your online presence.
2. Personal Facebook: Using a Facebook Page for your business allows you to promote your business while having a personal profile to keep in touch with family and friends in private.
3. Unlimited Fans: Your personal profile page has a limit of 5000 friends which is imposed by Facebook.  While most of us do not have 5000 personal friends, if you are using a facebook profile for your business contacts or prospects, this number can be turn out to be very limiting. A fan page, on the other hand, will allow you to have an unlimited number of “fans”. Some have thousands and even millions of fans, just  like the Coca Cola Facebook Page who have 56 million and local Cork newspaper the Cork Independent Facebook Page with over 20,000 fans.
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Facebook Fan pages are indexed by Google, which means that anything you post on your fan page can be found by anyone doing a Google search.  Content from your personal profile page does not have this same benefit.  Exposure to your business or service will be expanded because your social media content will now be found by anyone (not just a Facebook user) who searches via Google.  Additionally, Facebook is the 2nd most trafficked site; second only to Google in fact.  Any links from your fan page to your website will increase your chances of achieving higher rankings within Google.
5. Unlimited Access: Your fan page is totally open to anyone who stumbles across it.  If someone is searching for something through Google and your fan page pops up, that person can view the entire fan page without “liking”.  Obviously, it is your hope that they will “like” the page. Often businesses use 3rd party applications to give exclusive content to fans only and so this increases the chance of people “liking” the page.
6. Build brand advocates: Your Facebook fan page permits you to have a more personal communication with your fans than you can have through your website.  This is why a Facebook fan page is so valuable.  You can share content, videos, photos, run contests, ask questions, etc. This interaction will build relationships with your target market (fans) and builds the relationships. This “fans” quickly become your brand advocates.   Encouraging interaction and building a sense of community will ensure that they keep coming back.
7. Customer Service: The post-sales experience brings retention possibilities as well as a chance to acquire new customers. It is critical to keep current customers happy and show potential customers how much you care about your customers. Facebook gives your business a channel to achieve this. Customer service is key to the success of any business using social media or not!

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