social media Archives - Page 2 of 2

Dear Facebook…

Many of us use social media for our marketing. I asked a few entrepreneurs to send me questions they wanted answers to regarding Facebook, and here we go! :)

What is the difference between Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts?

Facebook ads are the adverts you see either to the right of your newsfeed or even in your newsfeed. There are a number of options, such as CPM or CPC (see below) and they can serve a number of purposes.

Boosting posts simply means you are paying for more visibility for your post with your followers and their connections, or even with a wider audience.

The thing is, not everyone that likes your page will see everything you post there. There is such a huge stream of content flowing around Facebook, so they have all sorts of ways to help you see more of what you are interested in and less of what you are not. You have probably noticed that the number of people who see your posts is a lot lower than the total number of likes your page has. People who interact with your posts, by liking, sharing or commenting, will see more of your posts going forward than those who do not do anything with them. This is why interactivity is so crucial on Facebook, because it gives you more visibility without having to pay for it. Boosted posts however enable you to pay to get more visibility. Oh well, Facebook is a business after all.

When you buy Facebook advertising, what is the difference between CPM and CPC?

CPM means Cost Per 1000 Impressions – so basically, how much you will pay for a thousand people to see your ad. This is also known as PPI or Pay Per Impression. [Read more…]

Getting found on Google – 5 things to keep in mind

If I had a dollar, pound or euro for each time someone asks me how one goes about getting found on Google, well, I would at least have one nice free lunch each week :)

Search Engine Optimization – making your website, and other online information about you – visible on Google and other search engines (apparently there are others, like Bing and Yahoo ;) This used to be the realm of the techies. It was all about keyword analysis, meta data, robot txt, link building and all those fun things. Many of those things are still valid, but many are not and its impact is constantly diminishing. You can no longer get ahead in the search engines by using trickery because Google and all the others are alert and are constantly changing their algorithms to make sure that they can’t be manipulated. But you know, this is actually not a bad thing at all. It is actually really really good. Because you know what that means? It means we just all have to get better at marketing.

Hmmmm … how? [Read more…]

What happens in an hour?

what happens in an hour - thoranna.is

One hour. 60 minutes. 3600 seconds. That’s one session at the gym. That is one TV show (with loads of ads). That’s one massage session – and not nearly enough! You can’t really do that much in an hour. Do you sell your time? Whether as a consultant, trainer, masseuse, teacher or whatever. Does it all work out? Do you buy an hour from someone? How much do you get out of that hour?

For a long time people have sold their time. When you get paid overtime you are getting paid by the hour. You get an x amount for your usual hours and y per hour above and beyond that. And if you have an employment contract with your company, that works. But if you are freelance, you need to sell quite a few hours and you have to sell them for a fair amount – and still have time to market yourself, keep your books etc. If you take a holiday, if you get sick, you don’t get paid. Summers tend to quiet down and so does the holiday period … if you trade hours for dollars you know what I am talking about.

How can you make more of your time? How can you take what you do, wrap it up and sell it more as a product rather than time. How can you continue to sell even though you take a holiday or come down with the flu? Can you teach people something related to what you do, write a book, create an online course, a DVD course or even an audio book? Can you sell other things related to what you do? A gardener could do a DVD course about yard maintenance, a masseuse could write a book about how to keep your muscles supple and how to relax, an arthritis specialist could publish a book with advice for arthritis sufferers and a personal trainer can sell training videos online. There are various ways to wrap up what you do and sell it – how can you make your service or knowledge into a package that can be sold?

[Read more…]

Content Marketing: Creativity and Organisation

I want to talk a bit about the practical stuff around content marketing. Our biggest headache is often how we are going to produce our own content and find what other stuff we can share, for example on social media, which demand quite a lot of activity and can be challenging to keep alive and active.

If you have been following me for some time, whether you have been reading the blog, subscribing to emails or following on social media, you can see that I use content marketing a lot.

The content can take various form, can be presented in various ways and the purpose of the content can be varied. You can have blogs, videos, social media, ebooks, webinars to name a few of the most common. Knowing how best to put the content forward and where best to distribute it is somewhat of an art – but mostly a skill that can be learned. Another thing, which has nothing to do with art and everything to do with being organised, is to set things up in a way that makes it easy to constantly churn out content and keep your visibility without working 24-hours-a-day.

In my company, I am the whole marketing department. Granted, I am on more social media than I would recommend, but that’s simply because I am in the marketing biz and need to know the most common ones and have some experience in using them. However, I recommend that you find the outlet most suited to your business and you yourself, stick to that, and don’t spread yourself too thin. Many people don’t understand how active I can be on social media, producing, finding and sharing content. They stare at me open-mouthed when I tell them I spend about one morning a month and 10 minutes a day maintaining that social media presence, and on the whole I spend perhaps 2-3 hours a week blogging and putting together my weekly emails, which include my blog, but also lots of other goodies for those who have signed up – hey, you should get more for signing up than if you have just spent a little like on Facebook ;)

Want to know the magic formula?

[Read more…]

Content Marketing: Are You Giving Them What They Want?

Marketing is changing. It has changed a lot since the start of the 21st century. With the internet, social media, mobile etc. marketing is less and less about one-sided broadcasting of marketing messages, like we know from traditional media like TV, print and radio, and more and more about pulling people in – attracting them.

Marketing is becoming less about grabbing people and more about being there when people are looking for what you have to offer, or anything related to it.

Marketing is less about pushing things on to people and more about pulling people in.

The marketing jargon is that we are moving from outbound marketing to inbound marketing.

A lot of marketing today is [Read more…]