App This, App That...Why Do I Need Apps?

Has your business explored the world of adding apps to your Facebook Page yet? If not, you might be missing out on some great marketing exposure as well as customer engagement! At Big Red Printing, we currently have 2 custom apps added to our website, one where we post this newsletter and the other where we post our monthly coupon.  

The app portion of your Facebook Page is great real estate to engage your customers, whether it is with coupons, newsletters, email sign-ups, etc. Facebook pages allow you to use up to 12 apps at one time! Some of the 12 apps that you are allowed are “mandatory” such as Photos, Likes, Events and Maps.

There are millions, well maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, of apps out there, but I am going to explore a few of my favorites. (If you want to see what they look like in action, visit our Facebook page as we utilize them on our page: 

facebook.com/bigredprinting)

App Bistro—appbistro.com/#

This is not an app, but it is my go to destination to discover new apps. App Bistro is full of suggested apps for many different categories. They will even email you weekly to tell you what apps they think you might be interested in based on your favorites.

Issuu-—issuu.com—Issuu is an app that lets you publish and share your publications for free and embed them on websites, blogs, and social networks. This is a great place to store PDF documents and then use the code that issuu creates to embed on your Facebook Page. We use the Issuu app to post this newsletter on our page. 

Woobox—woobox.com

Woobox is an awesome app that lets you create a wide variety of interactive things to add to your website such as: coupons, sweepstakes, polls, custom facebook tabs, photo contests, instant win games, Pinterest tabs, and Twitter tabs.

Why Video Marketing Makes Sense

Video marketing is one of the newest trends in the mix of marketing channels. Since 2007, the number of hours of video that are uploaded every minute has jumped from 8 hours to 48 hours (see the figure on the right). So why all the excitement about video?

1 word ­— YouTube: A video sharing service that allows users to watch videos posted by other users and upload videos of their own. The slogan of the YouTube website is “Broadcast Yourself.” 

Generally speaking, text articles don’t provide the same urgency as videos do. Videos offer a better, quality experience to the end user. In fact, once your videos start to create this urgency with end users, your videos will start becoming popular and end users will begin subscribing to your video channel so they don’t miss one.

Videos are one of the best ways to educate your customers on your products and services. It engages their senses, as well as utilizes technology that they already incorporate into their daily lives. Keep in mind that people are more likely to interact with your video if it is shorter - shorter sells.

4 Benefits of Adding Video Marketing to your Marketing Mix...

1. Audience appeal - most people want to be entertained, they don’t want to read information
2. Videos on demand - people can download your videos anytime and view them from anywhere (well almost anywhere!)
3. Relatively inexpensive to produce
4. Improve your rankings on Google’s search engine - Google allows videos to be searched and ranked

“Over 40% of people today watch online videos on a weekly basis with over 70% watching online videos at least 1 time per month!”

Source: prweb.com

To Blog or Not To Blog

Narrative building, relationship building, experience demonstrating...if used correctly and consistently, a blog can be a very powerful tool for connecting with your customers. I recently read an article on Digital Brand Marketing’s blog entitled, “Do You Need a Blog? The Personal Branding Perspective,” and they explain perfectly about how powerful a blog can be, “Have you seen Amy Adams and Meryl Streep in the movie Julie & Julia?  The film demonstrates the power of blogging, and how it can impact an individual’s life or business.  I won’t give away the plot, but the main character played by Amy Adams follows her cooking passion and writes about her struggles and successes.  Her creativity, writing ability, emotion and content slowly began to resonate and attract a following, media attention and much more.”

Following are some reasons that you should blog:

1. SEO - the more you post blog articles with relevant keywords, the better search engine results your page will get.
2. Social Media Marketing - by posting blog posts to your website and linking them to social media pages, you will build excitement and more traffic to both your website and blog.
3. Generating Leads and Sales - a blog is an open platform that gives everyone on the web access to learn more about the products and services that your company or organization offers.
4. Lowering Costs - instead of buying expensive advertising space, you can utilize your blog to describe your products and services.
5. Receiving Feedback - blogs are an open dialogue, your followers can leave comments in response to your blog posts.

You should not start a blog if:

1. You will not be consistent about posting to your blog.
2. You do not have someone in your company that will be dedicated and take ownership of the blog.

Consistency and timeliness are the two necessities you must have if you plan to start a blog. So go on, start creating a narrative for your brand. Remember to use the editorial calendar that I included in a previous post to schedule timely, informational, interesting and fun blog posts. If your company has a blog, I’d love to read it, so please email me a link to it: melissa@bigredprinting.net. Check out our blog at: http://bigredprintingspotlight.blogspot.com/

Source: www.impactbnd.com, “Top 10 Reasons Every Small Business Should Be Blogging.”

Is Your Direct Mail Social?

Why integrating your marketing efforts should be one of your top priorities. 

Did you know that research still shows that 60% of consumers prefer receiving physical marketing materials, such as direct mail postcards, versus emails. In fact, some of the most recognizable brands, such as Google, spend millions of dollars from their marketing budgets on the printing and mailing of direct mail pieces. Why? Just as I mentioned before, some audiences are more responsive to physical mail and therefore it is important to integrate your marketing efforts.

Integrating your marketing efforts means that if your company has gone social, it will be important for you to incorporate your social media into your traditional media campaigns. See DIAGRAM 1 for a comparison between types of traditional vs. new media. I’ve said it a million times and I will keep saying it, just because you build it, doesn’t mean that people are going to visit your social profiles. 

DIAGRAM 1

Ways You Can Integrate Social Media into Traditional Media Outlets

Add your social profile names and logos to your traditional media items

• Be SPECIFIC - put the direct URL to the page. (i.e. facebook.com/bigredprinting)
• Add a social component to your traditional media (make your offer social!)
• Offer a discount, offer a discount for sharing the discount on social media, offer a free whitepaper for liking your page
• Post your offline campaigns to your social profiles
• Create events to entice recipients to join you online

It is important to remember that as you plan your direct mail campaigns, you should simultaneously be also planning your email messages, Facebook status updates, blog posts and tweets so that they all complement each other. 

Sources: socialmediab2b.com, yellowbook360.com

Tweet, Retweet...What’s all the Chirping About.

Twitter 101 exclaims, “Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turing to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.”

Twitter will prove to be a valuable social network to most companies, you just have to give it a chance. Twitter is a platform where you can quickly connect with your customers.  For example, some of the marketing implications for businesses to use Twitter include the following: Improve Customer Service, Hold Inexpensive Focus Groups, Follow Customers, Manage Customer Expectations , Recruit Employees, and Perform Inexpensive Market Research.

Once you are on Twitter, it soon comes time for you to prove to your boss that your use of Twitter has been successful. Similar to Facebook likes, you can’t judge a Twitter account by the number of followers it has. If you have 75 followers that you are engaging and interacting with on a regular basis, you are in a better position than a company that has thousands of followers but doesn’t pay attention to anything they have to say. 

If your followers aren’t the most important metric for you to measure your Twitter success, then how should you be measuring your Twitter influence? Following are a few of the many available websites that you should explore, they will help you uncover just how influential you are on Twitter.

Klout—Klout.com (understand and leverage your Twitter influence)

PeerIndex—PeerIndex.com (a snapshot of what you talk about on Twitter)

Tweriod – http://www.tweriod.com/ (best times to tweet to reach your audience)

Bit.ly –https://bitly.com/ (track your links, see who is reading them)

Tweet Stats — http://tweetstats.com/ (graph your Twitter Stats)

Twitalyzer—http://www.twitalyzer.com/ (in depth information on your followers)

Retweetrank—http://www.retweetrank.com/ (see how many retweets you get)

Twentyfeet­­— https://www.twentyfeet.com/ (all your online stats in one place!)

Tweetlevel— http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/ (Twitter measurement tool)

Happy Tweeting!

An Editorial Calendar Will Save Your Sanity!

Social media tasks, marketing tasks—an editorial calendar will save your sanity. Do you sit down at the beginning of each month and lay out your plan for your social media and marketing efforts? If not, I would HIGHLY recommend that you start. You will be organized and your social media and marketing will be streamlined. Below is a sample Social Media Editorial Calendar.  You can adapt this to your needs—marketing or social media. An excel spreadsheet would be a great tool to utilize when creating your calendar.

Here, There and Everywhere...Where in the Social World Should You Be?

There are so many different social media platforms out there, that I thought I would summarize and suggest a few of my favorites. See the table below to see where in the social world you might fit in!