Pin Like a Pro with these 10 Top Tips of Pinterest

I’m a big fan of Pinterest and use it extensively both personally and professionally. Here are my top 10 tips that will having you pinning like a pro in no time.

Verify your Pinterest Account

This is a simple process, requiring you to download a file and upload it to the root of your server. This helps to instill  a sense of trust and authority in you and of course, displaying a link to your website on your Pinterest profile makes a lot of sense.

Think keywords when you name your boards

Make sure you think carefully and give each board you create an informative, keyword focused name.  Also make sure you include a compelling, keyword rich board description. Pinterest is an excellent provider of backlinks, and remember that individual boards will get indexed by search engines.

Pin frequently

In general it’s better to pin a few things every day than it is to pin loads of things once a month.  If you pin every day you will have more visibility in the Pinterest feed for more of the time.

Schedule your Pins

You might get 10 minutes to Pin mid afternoon, or just before you go to bed, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best time for you to Pin. Once you’ve figured out the best times for you to Pin (see previous tip) make the process easier by scheduling Pins in order to optimise your visibility.

Analyse your Pin responses

Keep an eye on the amount of engagement your activity generates, different types of content will be more popular with your target audience than others so keep an eye on what you do, and just like timing, find out what works for you.

Add Pinterest to your website

Make sure your website makes it clear that people can follow you on Pinterest, but don’t just include a link, give people a reason to follow you by outlining a few key benefits.

Make it easy for people to Pin your content

Make sure you have a Pin button on key content and product pages on your website. Making it super easy for people to share your content on Pinterest  is important, but it’s amazing how many retail websites don’t have a Pinterest button installed on their product pages!

Make use of the lack of height restriction

Keep the width of Pinterest images to a maximum of 554px but make the most of the fact there is no vertical size constraint.  Narrow, long Pins are much more eye catching than short images – the longer the better as you’ll instantly grab more screen space, making your content really stand out!

Choose awesome cover images!

On every board you set up you are able to select a cover image.  Go through each board and choose images with the wow factor to help your boards stand out and look as appealing as possible.

Don’t just Pin products, Pin your latest blog articles or eGuides

Arty shots, great photography and the latest must-have products are all very well and good, but don’t miss out on the chance to Pin a greater range of content.  Blog articles, eGuides and eBooks are gaining in popularity and are being more frequently Pinned as people realise it is a great resource for collecting all sorts of content, not just pretty pictures.

My best advice for Pinterest, and the unofficial 11th tip in this article, is to show personality and have fun!

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

So you want to be a social media manager? Find out what it really takes

The Social media industry is still rapidly growing and as a result, over the last couple of years there has been an explosion in demand.  Now widely accepted as a highly effective communications tool, the growth trend shows no signs of stopping any time soon.

Get paid to post on Facebook – what could be easier right?

Whilst awareness is at an all time high, many businesses wrongly regard social media as ‘easy’ to do, after all, what skill does it take to make a status update?  When businesses try and fail to execute social media activities effectively however, they begin to appreciate the fact that there is actually much more to it.

The ‘anyone can do it’ approach is being perpetuated by a slew of get-rich-quick websites, reporting social media management as being the easy way ordinary people with no related training or experience can get rich doing.

This positive can-do approach is something i’m all for – whilst I have an academic background in Management and Marketing, everything I know relating to social media is self taught or has been learned over many years of working with a vast number of different clients.  This ‘anyone can do it’ ethos is meant to empower people, encouraging them to get into social media management, usually after they part with sums of money for a webinair claiming to teach them all the secrets they need in just half an hour.  This approach however devalues the social media industry and leads to unskilled individuals being put in charge of marketing activities they are ill equipped to carry out.

Whilst no one is infallible and we all make mistakes, doing a job you don’t fully understand and have no past experience of can be a recipe for disaster.  Any mistakes a social media manager makes are highly public and often can’t be ignored or swept under the carpet.  In this industry where an individuals name is their reputation; make costly mistakes early on and you may find it hard to distance yourself from them.  Don’t kid yourself that just because you have a Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr account that you have the skills necessary to run activities for a business.

Businesses also need to understand that they get what they pay for.  If they are only offering intern money, that’s what they will get and the results are very likely to reflect that.  Chasing Likes and community growth is all well and good but if you are considering social media management as a career choice you really shouldn’t be pitching your services until you understand that Likes don’t mean squat.

Managing and growing a community is senseless if it’s done interdependently of other marketing activity and isn’t strategically driven

Clients consistently underestimate just what it takes to deliver social media activities successfully. Once educated or once they try it for themselves and fail, most soon realise that they simply don’t have the time or expertise to handle activities in-house and look to outsource instead.  There is no denying there is a market for social media managers and whilst i’m always happy to knowledge share, discuss best practice, techniques and encourage those wanting to work in this area, I am increasingly unnerved by the gung-ho ‘anyone can do it it’ mentality which stands to devalue this incredibly important, diverse and often misunderstood role.

I don’t agree that ‘anyone’ can be a social media manager, I think it is a complex role that demands a lot of different skills and experience to carry out.

If you aren’t already a prolific user of social media, how can you hope to use a social network effectively for a business? Without a strong grounding in marketing communications, how can you effectively engage people and fulfill business objectives that are more diverse and challenging than simply growing fans or followers? If you don’t know your CTR from ROI how can you analyse and understand the data that is critical in gauging the effectiveness of your activities? If you don’t have customer facing skills or don’t have the ability to resolve problems, how will you deal with irate customers posting on a clients Facebook wall? If you’re written communications aren’t great, how will you create compelling content and great headlines?  I’m sure you get my point.

Just some of the skills a social media manager needs to have

Strong interpersonal and networking skills

A good understanding of planning and strategy

Customer-centric approach

Clear understanding of Google Analytics (or similar) and the ability to set up effective campaign tracking

The ability to interpret data and gain insights

Lots of  creativity and personality (even the stuffiest brand needs to show some personality to succeed on social media)

Up to date knowledge of guidelines for all the platforms you are active on

Excellent copy writing skills, in particularly the ability to write good headlines

A good understanding of business objectives and the ability to craft effective calls to action

The ability to create custom graphics to accompany posts

Excellent time management skills and high level of focus

If you don’t have all of the above, of course there are things that you can pick up or learn along the way, but personally, I wouldn’t trust something as important as my businesses social media activity to an inexperienced trainee.

The fact remains that social media is the current, hip thing to be involved in and for very obvious reasons, has massive appeal as a career.  Get paid to surf the net and post on Facebook all day?  What could be easier! My advice however is not to be blinded by all of the companies making money off your naivety, offering training that will turn you pretty much over-night, into a wealthy social media professional. If you don’t have the experience to back up your claims, knowing a bit of marketing theory isn’t enough and before you’ve even got properly started, you may find your reputation damaged.

Theory means nothing, you’ll build a repuation based on the results you get and the knowledge and insights that you share

Spend all of your time and efforts into branding yourself as a social media expert now and what happens in a few years time when social media has come of age?  Demand won’t always remain as high as it currently is – how appealing will your CV look in a few years time when all you can boast is social media management when it is no longer quite so shiny and new a skill to have?

To survive and prosper in this industry you will need many more strings to your bow than simply being able to use any given social network. Social media is just one part of the marketing mix and just one of the communication methods open to businesses. Invent yourself as a specialist in social media and in a very short time you might find that as the industry matures and moves on, you get left behind with narrowly defined, outdated skills.

An individual who can grow a Facebook community is valuable right now and yes, many people are making careers out of doing just that.  Keep in mind though that it won’t be long before businesses realise they need to turn not to social media managers, but to marketing strategists who understand the bigger picture and will be the real driving force behind successful, sustainable social media activities. Don’t risk staking your career on social media alone, which when taken in isolation will become obsolete faster than you can say “Friendster”.

Facebook Basics Part 2 – 15 practical Facebook tips and activities

Following on from my Facebook Basics Part 1 -  Understanding the business benefits of Facebook article last week, this is the second  and final part and looks at some Facebook facts and tips that will help you get the most out of your Facebook activities. You will also find some suggestions for engagement activities that you can take away and implement on your own Facebook wall straight away.

Some Facebook Facts

• Facebook has over a billion worldwide users, making it the world’s biggest social network.
• Almost half of the population of the UK now uses Facebook.
• Functionality differs on Facebook pages for individuals and Facebook pages for businesses. People can follow (become a fan of) your business page by clicking ‘Like’ rather than having to make or accept a friend request.
• Whenever you post to your Facebook wall, your page fans will see your content show up in their own Facebook news feed.*
• Building a community takes real, sustained effort to achieve and does not happen overnight.
• Facebook is continually evolving, with the new Timeline introduced in March 2013 and Facebook Graph Search rolled out around the same time.
• A Facebook advert or cover image must contain no more than 20% text.
• There are countless Facebook apps for smart phones that make it super easy to monitor and post content to your page when you are out of the office or away from your desk.
• 1 in 3 small businesses actively use Facebook.
• Facebook insights provide you with in-page analytics which will help you identify the type of content people like the most and the days and times when engagement is at its highest.

*This is not always the case.  Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm governs exactly what your fans will see in their feeds (or not) and it is possible for people to become fans of your page but choose to ‘turn off’ your content so that they don’t see it in their feed.  People only tend to do this if the content you post is not relevant to them (which means they are highly unlikely to become customers) or your content may be relevant but annoying due to repetition or too high a posting frequency.

15 Facebook Tips

1. Facebook has lots of rules and guidelines.  Fall foul of these and you could find your page shut down.  Not much of a problem for a new page with few followers, but for an established page with a thriving community this can be devastating so make sure you have a good read of the rules before you do anything.
2. When you set up your business page make sure you choose the most appropriate category to list your business under.
3. Your page should be called the same as your business name and don’t forget to set up your vanity URL so the link to your page doesn’t include a random string of numbers.
4. Unlike on your personal Facebook page, your profile picture should usually be of your logo or something clearly branded and immediately recognisable.
5. Make sure you make the most of your business page by including a clear, attractive cover picture and by filling in all of your company information including your website address and contact details.
6. If you are the admin for more than one page, make sure you post on the wall under the correct company identity, by selecting the “use Facebook as” dropdown option at the top right of the page
7. Always post pictures to accompany your text – not only does this increase engagement, but this also means that you can then edit the text content of your post should you need to.
8. Include calls to action whenever you post sales or action oriented content, ask people to click for more information, ask them what they think and so on.
9. Include product links or links through to information pages on your website whenver you post to make it super easy for people to find out more or buy from you.
10. Use a URL shortener  whenever you post links such as Bitly or goo.gl  to make long URLs easier on the eye, that way they don’t detract from your content as much.
11. There is nothing more off-putting that an unloved Facebook wall.  Avoid sporadic posting, if you can’t do an update once a day, then at least a couple of times a week, but even if you only update a few times a week, you must monitor your wall at least daily.
12. Don’t put too much effort into building an audience for your page until you’ve got some content on there.  If you go to the effort of attracting new visitors and your wall is empty, they won’t have any reason to like your page or to stick around.  Try to aim for around half a dozen posts on your wall before you start actively promoting.
13. Make sure time is built in every day, to monitor your Facebook wall – this is critical in allowing you to join in and shape the conversations that are evolving and to be available to answer customer service or any pre-sales questions.
14. Track and analyse your Facebook wall stats and you’ll gain valuable insights into what activities work best for you.
15. Be creative!  Engaging people isn’t easy and takes a flow of almost constant creativity to achieve; always be on the look out.  What has worked for you as a consumer responding to a business’s posts?  What have you seen that you could adapt to suit your audience? 

Practical activities you can carry out now!

Post a poll – Ask your fans a relevant question on a topic of interest.  For example, you could ask them who they think is going to win the big game, what their plans are for the weekend or anything that means they can express their opinions or get involved.

Post a picture – People respond to visual imagery far better than they respond to text alone, so you’ll find that engagement levels increase when you post pictures to your wall.  Post a picture of your latest new product, your latest advert, a picture you think is cool or anything you think is relevant or that your fans will like.

Show some personality – Interacting with a faceless brand carries little incentive, if fans can relate to the human side of your brand however, they are more likely to interact with you.  We all love a good laugh, an inspiring quote or breath-taking landscape from time to time; these kind of posts can work well, putting a smile on people’s faces is a great way to build relationships.

Get behind a good cause – If you are involved with any charities, local fundraising or perhaps sponsor a team then you can use your Facebook wall to spread awareness or raise funds and generally leaverage your community for a good cause – proving it’s not all about hard sell and profit is good every now and again.

Gain some insight – Ask your customers what they like most about your goods or services, ask them what they’d like to see more of, don’t be afraid to use them as a focus group.  As with polls, people love making their opinions known, just make sure you monitor things closely.  The last thing you want is to find your post to backfire and turn into customers sharing negative experiences (as was the case with McDonalds now legendary 2012 Twitter campaign, dubbed McFail when their hashtag was used to highlight negative customer experiences).  Monitoring all activity remains key, allowing you to step in and respond in real time should the need arise. You also have the added benefit of having far more control over your Facebook wall too.

Give your fans credit – A simple thank-you can go a long way to making your community feel valued.  Acknowledge the part they play and thank them for their support and participation.  If you want to go one step further you could create a regular ‘super fan’ contest, or every now again hold a flash sale where you give your Facebook followers a special discount code.

Run a competition – Create a Facebook specific competition where you use your wall to tell people about a competition running on your website, or use a Facebook app to run a competition right there on your Facebook wall. By using an app, you can also make it a requirement that people share and/or like your competition in order to enter.

Create a Facebook-only promotion  - You can publish a special voucher code on your Facebook wall, or better still, use a ‘fan gate’ app to incentivise none fans to ‘like’ your page to get access to the promotional code.

Facebook Basics Part 1 – Understanding the business benefits of Facebook

Introduction to Facebook pages for business

Facebook is the king of social networks and as such, almost doesn’t need an introduction.  It is likely that you are already familiar with Facebook and probably have your own Facebook profile. With over a billion users, it’s the biggest social network with a user base that is still growing.

As with other social media platforms, Facebook allows businesses to build a community with the potential of turning a proportion of those community members into customers. By clearly showcasing a combination of the attractiveness of your goods and services, your customer service and your brands personality and/or USPs, you can use Facebook to attract new customers to you and foster brand loyalty in your existing customers.  Just like on your website, your aim is to make people stick around long enough that you get the opportunity to persuade them to buy in to your brand  and become a customer.

Don’t make the mistake of using Facebook like a one-way sales channel. Bombard your Facebook fans with offer after offer, and you’ll find this is the quickest way to lose potential customers (unless you have a deal based business model such as Groupon or Wowcher).  As a rule, no one wants constant hard sell filling up their timeline. The key to successful use of Facebook for businesses lies in your ability to engage followers, listen to them and to balance the content you are publishing.

What’s the point of Facebook?

Facebook provides businesses with the ability to create and grow an engaged community of customers and potential sales leads.

Building communities and individual relationships

Facebook provides an excellent means by which a company can not only demonstrate their expertise in any given area, but they can actively create a brand personality, in keeping with brand values and marketing strategy and promote their unique selling points.

Facebook is all about engagement and adding value. As a result of reaching out to your customers, you’ll obtain highly valuable insights that will shape your communications (extending to other social networks and even transferable to your traditional marketing channels), making them even more effective.

Successful use of Facebook relies upon effective engagement and in your ability publish fresh and interesting content.

Building a community doesn’t come easily and it certainly won’t happen overnight.  You will need to commit to and invest in a long-term strategy that will underpin all of your social media activities.  If you are after a quick win or instant results, then social media is not going to provide that, unless you are using paid advertising.

Whilst this introduction to Facebook deals primarily with the free page all businesses can set up, you do have the option of enhancing your presence further by taking advantage of promoted posts and Facebook ads. Similarly enhancing your page with free or paid-for Facebook apps, can help to improve the quality of your content and help you to attract more visitors.

Facebook pitfalls to avoid

Ignore your Facebook wall at your own peril

Checking your social media pages every now and again just isn’t enough, and for any page with more than a few hundred Likes or followers, it is critical that you are regularly monitoring interactions.

Consider this scenario.  An irate customer posts on your Facebook wall complaining about a customer service issue.  Respond to such a post quickly, providing an apology, reason and resolution and you can effectively turn the situation into a positive PR opportunity.  Consider that same irate post on your Facebook wall left un-answered for several days.  This makes it look like you don’t care about customer service and also shows that you don’t pay attention to your Facebook wall, sending a very negative message to anyone visiting your page and it certainly won’t help you convert new customers.

Once set up, the single most important thing to remember is to monitor your Facebook wall.  Whilst daily monitoring is acceptable, for active Facebook communities, then you are going to want to check your wall for any mentions, pre-sales questions or customer service issues several times a day.  Read more about the perils of not monitoring your Facebook wall in the article Keep track to avoid social media fail.

Fake likes are largely worthless to you

You are likely to come across companies offering to sell you ‘Likes’ and for a new page, this can certainly be tempting.  Consider this though – why do you want to buy likes?  What benefit do you get from appearing to have more likes? The real value of Facebook comes in the form of genuine fans, which should largely be made up of existing and potential customers – these fans are receptive sales leads and so have an intrinsic value, making it worthwhile to invest your time into engaging them.

Buy likes and your new fans will have no real interest in your brand and as such can’t be categorised as potential sales leads, in which case they are of little or no value to you.

Failing to engage sends out negative signals

To make Facebook work you need to give people a reason to come to your Facebook page; when they are on your page, your goal is to ensure that they see something they are interested in, resulting in a desirable action, such as clicking through to your website.  If you rarely update your wall you aren’t giving people a reason to come back.  If however your content is interesting and fresh, then people will like your page and will keep coming back.

Facebook and all social media, is about crafting two-way conversations.  Engaging fans isn’t about constantly pushing out content; it’s about publishing content and then pausing to listen to your fans responses.  This way you will learn what they like and will be more able to understand how to reach your target audience.  When a fan is actively engaging via activities on your wall, they are highly receptive.  Give them what they want and engaged fans can turn into customers.

Controversy can increase the viral potential of content but is unlikely to win you customers

Some believe that posting controversial content will help that content spread and go viral.  Whilst this can be an effective strategy for achieving viral spread, it isn’t recommended.  Controversy often stirs up strong emotions which can have very negative implications.

Stay away from being too controversial, you don’t want to polarise or alienate people; you might have strong political or personally held views, your business’s Facebook wall however is not the right place for you to express them.

To read about viral marketing and controversy see the article Trust me i’m a marketing ‘expert’.

Beware of the Facebook Troll

Lurking online is a special breed of person, known as a Troll.  Simply put, a Troll is someone who is purposely antagonistic, argumentative and/or offensive.  They will often respond to posts just to create an argument or cause a reaction and will frequently use abusive or offensive language.

Depending on your point of view, you might see them as a harmless nuisance or you might see them as anarchistic trouble makers.  Once identified as a Troll, my own stance is to block the offender from posting.  Blocking or banning should not be taken lightly though – if someone has a real customer service issue or complaint to air, it is always advisable to deal with it rather than simply removing the post and banning the user.

Don’t be tempted to deal with the potential threat of the Troll by locking your profile down and stopping people from posting on your wall altogether though. If you do that, you will no longer see any of the true benefit that social media provides, as you will no longer be inviting two-way conversation, turning Facebook into just another one-way marketing channel.

Part two of this introduction to Facebook will be published later this week and will provide you with some facts and tips that will help you get the most out of your Facebook activities, as well as some suggestions for engagement activities that you can take away and implement.

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

Beware of bad marketing advice from self proclaimed ‘experts’

I read an article the other day called “How to manipulate people for fun and profit”.  I’m not going to link to it because in my opinion, the advice it provided was utter garbage, highlighting the ease with which one can tout themselves as an ‘expert’ but in reality, prove they are anything but by giving not just poor, but potentially damaging advice.

The article states that action occurs as a result of inducing a high arousal state – a well known concept in Psychology and absolutely correct. My issue however is with how the author recommended you induce a high state of arousal – by outraging people.  The author stated that marketing strategy should focus on writing content that is purposely divisive and intentionally controversial.  So lets get this straight, to go viral you have to become a troll?

According to the author, viral marketing  rests
on your ability to become an Internet troll

The article went on to highlight instances of when highly controversial or outrageous content had been spread and gone viral. I am not disputing the fact that controversy spreads, my issue however is that if your marketing activities purposely manipulate people into feeling angry or outraged, both of these are negative emotions.  For the majority of businesses, i guarantee you, that negative sentiment does not convert customers (unless you are a charity or ethical company wanting to highlight injustices or galvanise action for example). On the whole though, it’s a fundamental fact that negative sentiment doesnt win customers, something any sales or marketing professional would be fully aware of.

The really scary thing, is the massive number of positive comments the author received from other, so-called marketing professionals, who agreed and thought the advice was great! I also found it strange that my very concise and polite response to the article didn’t get published.  Whilst i’m at it, the fact that no dates are included on the blog also rings alarm bells – best practice changes as social media and content marketing evolves.  A lot of advice provided a year ago could now be massively out of date and of little value to a reader – avoiding transparency by hiding publish dates in this way just isn’t the sort of tactic a reputable professional would need to use.

Does manipulating potential customers into feeling strong negative
emotions sound like good business sense to you?

If I am outraged by the comments or tactics of a company, yes, I might go and read about them, I might talk about (as I currently am doing), but I sure as hell won’t shop with them or spread positive word of mouth, in which case, the activity has successfully turned a potential customer into someone who would never, ever be a customer. Which is, of course, is the polar opposite of what any marketing activity would hope to achieve.

In advising people to be purposely antagonistic and controversial in their marketing efforts, this author is essentially telling you how to loose customers. High share rates of such an article might make it go viral, but if that virality spreads and inspires nothing but negative sentiment and drives customers away, how is that effective marketing?

Does any business really want controversy instead
of customer conversions?  Of course not!

I’m assuming that the sole purpose of this article was to spew utter rubbish to get people talking.  Yep, it’s got me talking, even telling my readers about the article, but it’s also put the author and the website on my negative radar, meaning all future content I’m exposed to from them will be aggressively filtered out and ignored. Is that really what any company would want to happen as a direct result of their marketing activities?  Of course not.

No one is infallible, and whilst reputable writers will endeavour to fact check and identify multiple sources before publishing information, we don’t always get it right.  In relation to social media marketing and theory, there often isn’t a right or wrong way to do things, only best practice.

As social media proliferates and it becomes ever easier for people to self-publish, so the threat of misinformation increases. Don’t believe all of the advice that you read just because it is published on a popular blog or is written by someone calling themselves an expert.  At worst some articles are based on nothing more than opinion, at best, on tried and tested techniques which have been proven to work, but that doesn’t mean it will work for your particular customer base or business sector.

Never lose your objectivity and question the authors
professional credentials if necessary

Remain objective, if you aren’t convinced then ask the author a question by leaving a comment on their blog and if you really have your suspicions, see if you can find other sources providing the same advice or do a bit of snooping to uncover the real credentials of the author.

By doing this you will avoid the charlatans out there and won’t end up alienating or loosing customers as a result of executing misguided marketing activities.

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

How to write great website content

In previous posts I’ve looked at why paying attention to your content makes sense, so this time i’m going to discuss all of the basics you will need to be aware of in order to write effective website content.

Don’t just write, lay your foundations and plan

Before you can write your content you need to plan it.  Start by thinking about each of the individual content pages you want to have on your website and list them all, a basic bullet pointed list is generally sufficient for this if you don’t already have a fancy site map. If you are re-writing content for an existing website you just need to make a list of the pages you already have.

Plan key messaging and write around that

Next, you need to think about the information that people will need to enable them to make an informed decision about buying your services or products. As well as deciding what key information you need to get across, you’ll need to start thinking about the best way to present this information.

Nothing is quite as dull or off-putting as paragraph after paragraph of text

Hard facts and technical data are often entirely necessary but to present your service or products in a compelling way, it takes more than dry facts and text and this can be a tough one to get right.  Too informal and familiar and you risk sounding unprofessional, too formal and factual and you risk boring your readers and losing potential leads.

Ooh pictures, we love a good picture!

Pictures are good, use them frequently to break up text and add interest, but keep them relevant.  The pictures that you use need to add and not detract from your core messaging.  Read more about the importance of images in web design here.

Quotes are a great way of highlighting key information and breaking up text; tables and graphs are a good way to display complex or comparison data and headlines are essential to the structure of your page. Using a mixture of content will ensure your content is fresh meaning that website visitors stay engaged, buying you more time to win them over.

Be clever, be intriguing and invite curiosity

Not only do headlines break up vast blocks of text, but they offer readers a quick, at-a-glance clue to what the following content is all about.  A good headline is informative, relevant and entices a website visitor to continue reading, so it is critical to get this part right as strong headlines will help to elevate your copy, impacting on everything from your websites search engine ranking through to your conversion rates.

Information and facts are all well and good, but great copy needs to be engaging

The art of website copy writing rests upon the ability to present important information in a way that is interesting and engaging. Personality counts for a lot but that doesn’t mean you need to lapse into informal speech or become a hipster.  You can still be entirely human, likeable and interesting whilst maintaining professional credibility.

Copy writing tips you can take away

• Highlight all of the benefits and/or problems your service or products can solve
• Include information on how to use your service or products
• Be sure to highlight your USPs, this will help give people a reason to choose you over your competitors
• Mix up your content so that you use pictures, graphics, text, quotes and headlines
• Include strong calls to action e.g. ‘contact us now for a free quote’
• Include detailed service and/or delivery information
• The point of all your copy is to inform, persuade and convert so keep those goals in mind
• Use attractive, high quality pictures wherever possible or video content which is even better

For more information on content marketing and how to produce strong content, see the blog post 10 crucial content marketing questions.

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

 

The importance of images in web design

Most of us are aware that the use of images in social media communications increases engagement, but does this visual approach also translate through to your web site?

Web users are bored easily. Why wouldn’t they be when they know that another quick click and they can get something better? It’s no longer enough to just put the information on the page – you have to engage your readers with some visual attraction too. The number one way to do this? Using effectively chosen images to increase the clarity of your message, look more attractive, and convey your personality.

Engaging images – making your point in a millisecond

The cliché is true; a picture says a thousand words. They capture moments and feelings which evoke and draw the reader in, providing clarity on your message and your values. The perfect image will engage and entertain the user – which is exactly what you want your website to do. You want it to be a place where your user wants to come back.

Images of credibility

Real pictures increase your credibility. It is an assertion to the world that you are willing to represent your brand authentically, that you are proud of who you are and that you are transparent about it. People love to see who they will be dealing with, and being able to put faces to names makes you far more approachable too. Did you know that users spend, on average, three times as long looking at a person’s picture than their biography even though the biography takes up more room on the page?

It is especially important to think about using real images on your About Us page

Creating a professional image

Professional imagery and professional design creates an image of a professional company. Custom design and imagery will always be the best way of supporting and broadcasting your brand image and clarifying your message in a memorable and engaging way.

Balancing your design – contrast and whitespace

Let’s face it – a web page with no images on it looks pretty boring. On a very basic level, images bring contrast to a design which actually helps to emphasise your content by giving it the space to breathe. I’ve written before about how vital effective use of whitespace is in web design, and one of the main ways that the right balance is reached is by effectively changing the sizes and placement of images to complement and contrast the text.

The flip side – bad stock imagery and bland graphics

While great images make a great impression and clarify your message you do have to be aware that bad images can actually make things worse by sending conflicting messages. It’s all too easy to make mistakes with cheesy stock images. Stock imagery makes money because their messages are broad and ultimately generic, which means they aren’t in the best position to emphasise your point. Sometimes you can stumble on something perfect, but don’t run the risk of confusing your reader
with a poor choice!

We’re visual creatures

At the end of the day, we do judge books by their cover and make snap decisions based on what something looks like. When it only takes one click for your user to leave your website you have to do everything in your power to make them stay – and your website images are paramount to achieving that goal.

With thanks to guest blogger, Simon Bonello of British Design Experts.

Simon Bonello is the Director of British Design Experts, a design agency which specialises in creating professional and affordable logo design and digital work for start-ups and small businesses in the UK. He has helped thousands of start-ups to get a professional identity online and is an expert on developing a company logo and brand, creating an optimised online presence with SEO and social media, and is always happy to share his knowledge and give advice to start-ups.

Who should handle your social media?

Social media is important, through it you present an image of your company or brand, with the goal of positively influencing brand perception in order to attract and convert. The image you present in social media should therefore be just as well thought out as the image you present in any of your other marketing activities.

Would you invest resources into a major trade show and turn up with a trestle table and some flyers? Would you place a press advert without including a call to action, your web address or your company logo?

It might  sound crazy, but an awful lot of businesses get on the social bandwagon simply because their competitors are doing it or because they think they should, with little or no regard at all to what they want to achieve from it, let alone anything resembling a clear strategy.

When it comes to social media you can’t afford to get it wrong and increasingly, you can’t afford to simply choose not do it at all. As with any job, if you plan to appoint someone internally, you need to find the person or people with the relevant skills and experience.  Don’t trust your social media activities to a junior member of staff simply because they have time on their hands and don’t choose the employee who declares an interest because they use Facebook a lot.

An employee using social media for personal purposes is entirely different to that same employee speaking for your brand and using  social for business purposes.  Having more than a passing familiarity with social doesn’t mean they are the right person for the job.

The most capable candidate to handle your social media will often come from within the marketing department.  If you have an existing community manager then they are also a good bet.  My advice is to steer away from allocating social to members of the sales team and whoever you do choose, make sure they understand your goals, have good people skills (being friendly and approachable is a must in social media as is having a passion for customer service) and make sure that they have creativity with regards to coming up with ideas on how to engage followers.

Effective social media takes creativity, great interpersonal skills plus a strong grasp of business objectives.

It’s common, especially in SMEs, for social media to be handled by a number of different employees.  Whilst this can help spread the load and can help to keep content fresh, it can also mean that your communications suffer from a lack of coherence. My personal preference is to give responsibility to no more than a couple of individuals, though it will depend on the number of social media platforms you are active on and the scope of activities you plan to carry out.

For many SMEs, handling social media activity internally isn’t an option as they don’t have either the time or expertise to do it themselves, in which case calling in the services of an experienced agency or freelancer is the way to go.  The following list details all of the main considerations you will need to make before deciding on who to appoint to look after your social media activities.

Who should handle your social media? key insights to take away…

1. Handling social media in-house is still an investment

If you appoint someone internally, ensure that you are realistic in both what you expect them to achieve and in how long it will take; monitoring social daily takes time and even more time to do it effectively.  If you are only investing an hour or two a week into social, then the results you get will reflect that.

2. Don’t be afraid to outsource social

Good digital agencies will have extensive experience of working with clients across multiple sectors and will be able to use tried and tested techniques that will work for you.  Arm them with additional insight into who your target audience is and what it is you want to achieve and outsourcing social to the experts will pay off.

3. Limit potential social fallout

Limit access to the corporate social media accounts and ensure that login information is centrally held by a senior manager, as in the case of the recent HMV rogue Tweeter, you need a fail safe.

4. It’s social media, not a sales channel

Don’t make your activities all about selling, of course people love a great sales promotion or competition and will equally be keen to hear news from you, but don’t bombard them.  Do not use social like a sales channel because if you do you’ll turn people off and lose them.

5. Be flexible to aid creativity

Maintain flexibility, don’t be too regimented in tone and frequency; this stifles creativity and will do exactly the opposite of what you want it to achieve.

6. Set social guidelines

Consider implementing a social policy or provide guidelines for employees to follow so they understand all communications need to fit your brand and work to achieve business objectives.

7. Keep it consistent

If you use Bitly to shorten your URLs then use it all the time, using different tools and styles of communication leads to your activities appearing haphazard and should be avoided.

8. Be realistic

Carrying out even small-scale social marketing activities takes a considerable time investment; don’t leap into it until you understand the extent of the investment you’ll need to make.

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

 

Crucial Content Marketing Checklist – 10 questions to ask yourself before you publish new content

With strategic content creation, (the creation of content with a specific business goal in mind), it is critical that you take a systematic approach to ensure the quality and clarity of your content. As a result, I’ve put together this list of 10 questions to help ensure that the quality of all content you produce and publish is consistently high.  I’m often guilty myself of only having a cursory read over articles before I hit the ‘publish’ button.  The excitement of new content always leaves me eager to get it live and share it with people, but haste is not conducive to great quality content.

Rushing to share new content is tempting, but it won’t do you any favours

Even with good attention to detail, proof reading can be difficult, especially when you are the author and as such are highly familiar with the content. When reading the brain makes a number of inferences and educated guesses; instead of reading entire words the brain often picks up a few letter cues and based on those cues will fill in the blanks.  This means that when we read, without realising it, we often skip individual letters which makes it difficult to spot the odd typo.

Once you start writing about a subject it’s easy to veer off topic or end up with content that is unbalanced or even a bit waffly.  To make sure that your content is as good as it can be, considering the following questions will help. This list serves me well and I now have a quick run through it before I post any new content; I hope you will find it useful too.

10 questions to ask yourself before you publish new content

1. How clear is your messaging?

What is the point of your article?  Do you say everything you need to say in a clear and easy to follow way?  Do you waffle on and become irrelevant anywhere down the line? Content can often be edited down to improve the focus and clarity of the piece, but don’t strip it down ruthlessly.  Bare can be just as unappealing as long waffly content is.

2. Are you using relevant keywords?

Does your content contain useful keywords that reinforce the subject matter of your article?  For SEO purposes, ensuring that the keywords people will use to search for your content, are included in the headline and body is important in determining how well your content will rank.

Don’t forget that many commercial blogging platforms also allow you to choose keyword tags and categories for your content to be published under; making effective use of keyword tagging can be an effective way to reach new readers.

3. Have you looked at your content with fresh eyes?

Get a colleague, friend our family member to proof read your content before you post, just to be absolutely certain.  Failing that, leave your content for 24 hours before goming back to it gor a final read through.  You are much more likely to spot any errors you might have missed whilst writing and during your first few read-throughs.

4. Have you included calls to action?

Do you provide clear, useful calls to action in your content?  Actions range from asking people to register for a seminar, picking up the phone and calling your company to find out more or leaving their own comments on the article.

5. Is your headline winning?

A good headline can make or break your content and will seriously determine the levels of engagement you are able to achieve.  A good headline needs to be attention grabbing and should clearly summarise the nature of the content.

6. Does your content pop?

It’s a fact that people respond better to posts that are visual.  Have you broken up your text by using sub headings, lists, quotes and images?  This will ensure you achieve maximum engagement levels.

7. Have you included an Author link?

Link all of your content to you by using the Google+ rel=”author” link.  This will ensure that your content stands out in search results and helps increase your credibility and exposure.  It’s super easy to implement too so is definitely worth doing.

8. Do your links work?

Have you included useful links in your content?  If so, make sure they all work and pay attention to how they open.  Taking a reader away from your page might not be a great idea, in which case you might want to open a new window with your link.

Likewise, deep linking through to relevant content on your website, news or blog page plays an important role in SEO.  Finally, make sure all pictures included in your post are showing correctly and don’t have broken paths or links.

9. When are you going to publish?

The time of day and actual day of the week that you choose to post content on will help to determine how well it is received.

There are universally accepted best times and days to post content. For example, currently, content posted on a Monday morning is reported to achieve the highest levels of engagement but find what works for your audience.

Try posting on various different days at different times and track what happens to find out which day and time work best for you.

Remember though, you can publish your content at pretty much any time you want and simply hold off promoting until an optimal time/day.

10. How are you going to promote your content?

Once you’ve published your new content you need to tell people about it.  It can take Google anything from a few hours to many days before it will pick up and list your new content, so search engines alone should not be relied upon for sending you traffic.

Use all the channels available to you from your clients or companies news page through to social media.  Social is the ideal way to promote your article so make sure you use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc to publicise your new content. Digg, Reddit and Stumble Upon can also generate traffic to your blog but in my experience traffic from these sources is prone to suffer from high bounce rates.

I hope these 10 questions prove useful to you and as always, i’d love to hear your thoughts on this post!

Shell Robshaw-Bryan is a marketing consultant at Surefire Media, the Cheshire based web design, eCommerce and marketing company. Shell specialises in organic search, content strategy and social media engagement for both B2C and B2B companies.

If you’d like to find out how Surefire Media can help your business, get in touch!

 

Design & layout principles behind the perfect landing page

This guide to producing strong landing pages from Formstack.com is great and many of the suggestions on here are also highly suitable for email design too.  It might be old, a couple of years old in fact, which is positively ancient by web standards, but all of the points made are still highly relevant today. Given my recent article on email marketing that you can view here, I wanted to share this with you. Follow these design rules and you won’t fail!

Thanks again to Formstack.com for this great article.

What do you think makes a great landing page?  Do you disagree with anything?  Let us know what you think.

Shell Robshaw-Bryan on Google+