1. Keep the images brand consistent

Having brand consistency makes you much more recognisable when your post shows up in the news feed, it will build a familiarity with your audience each time they see it. A good way to implement this is with a strong colour theme that overlay or borders your images, or a shape that you use around your logo.
Utilise a consistent font for overlaying type onto an image, if you use a font for your logo you may want to use that to help it flow together. Always include a call to action so that you make it as easy as possible for a viewer to engage.

2. Have a clear message

Make sure that the image directly relates to the topic of the post as you don’t want to confuse the audience. Employing a distinct takeaway to the post and sticking to the point will make it easier for the viewer to understand.
Messages that evoke emotion are shared much more. A good way to do this is by having a strong social message to make people think, or to celebrate an achievement or milestone to spread positivity.

If you are putting text over the image; make sure it stands out and contrasts from the background, and position text in open spaces to avoid obstructing the image which will look messy and unprofessional.

3. Don’t look too much like an advert

People are often consuming large amounts of posts in a short amount of time, If the image looks like a blatant ad, it will turn people away and make them scroll right past it. The goal is to produce an engaging post that people want to look at. Once they have stopped to look at the post, they are much more likely to share or engage further.

If you are using your own image is it a good idea to add your logo and branding in a distinct way to make it clear without being too over the top.

4. Get the perfect picture

Finding a stock photo can be difficult, you will need to find a picture relevant to your post, then make sure to check the licencing to make sure if it is ok to use.

Know who your primary audience is and try to use images of that age group to make it more directly relatable to them. A safe choice is to use pictures of animals and children as these are the most commonly shared. A good site for free images is Pixabay.com.

It can be a good idea to buy the licence for a higher quality image, which will look more professional and helps you avoid using the same images as everyone else. A good site to licence images is Shutterstock.com. You could also produce your own images, which can be more time consuming but ultimately allows you to tailor make them for the message you want to convey and makes you stand out a lot more.

5. Know the platform

Some social media platforms embrace the use of images more than others and in different ways, it is important to know what works well and what doesn’t. Listen to the specifications given by the platform, if they give a specific size or shape that is preferred.

You may want to post the same or similar post across all your social media, it is best to adapt them a little to suit each platform accordingly.

Facebook – Keep the image simple and avoid small text, images allowed on Facebook are quite small file sizes, which makes images less crisp and difficult to read with smaller text.

LinkedIn – Is visual and having a clean and professional profile picture make you immediately more trustworthy, as well as having a profile banner that compliments your profile picture as they will often been seen together. LinkedIn is a good place for more in-depth images like info-graphics as it also favours content production.

Instagram – specifically made for sharing images, images with a plain white background are shared more often, also body parts i.e. hands and eyes get around 29% more engagement than full body pictures. Instagram allows you to use Hashtags which gives you a chance to categorise the content and make it easier for people to search for and find.

Twitter – is full of creative content so it can be difficult to stand out. It is best to use vibrant colours, and clean open images like landscapes. Twitter also uses hashtags, but it is best to only use two or three as to not bloat up your post.

Ultimately incorporating high quality images in your social media posts will drive up your engagement and increase visibility; it also helps you stand out from the crowd, and gives your brand some personality.

To find out how Website Design & Marketing can help you get more for your business, contact us online or call us on 01536 461 597.

The post 5 Great Ways to use Images to Enhance Your Social Media first appeared on WD&M.

You no longer use Direct Mail because of the expense and hassle, your Google AdWords campaigns are becoming harder and more expensive as competition increases, Email Marketing seems too spammy – and all the talk is of Social Media being the next big thing in marketing.

So, with all the hype, all the positive vibes and the clear social changes that are occurring as people spend more time on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn it’s easy to understand why Social Media is being perceived as being the next big thing.

That’s why “getting into it” is seen as a good idea.

However, there is an elephant in the room.

A great big charging, snorting and bellowing Bull elephant!

The other day a really good client asked me the question – “now that our website is working really well, our list is growing rapidly, sales are flying and our email communications plan is working well, what do you think about using Social Media?”

After a short pause and a quick think, I had to admit …

Social Media just isn’t a viable marketing strategy for the vast majority of businesses (see below for some special case exemptions).

I felt like I was letting him down. I felt like I was a “flat earth” proponent.

How could it be true that Social Media is so lousy for marketing when it sounds so good?

I know that my answer might seem like sacrilege. But let’s look at the facts…

Sales, Revenue and Profit

Start knocking on the doors of businesses in your road or town and keep going until you have knocked on 100 doors.

Ask every one of them what is generating the majority of their revenue today – you’ll be lucky to find one that does it with Social Media. Even 5 or 6 years after Social Media burst onto the scene.

In fact most who are using Social Media will tell you “we don’t do it to generate a return”! Go figure.

Response and Value

Compare what return you may get with Social Media with other marketing and you’ll discover a sad, frustrating and heart breaking truth (we’ve discovered this the hard way too).

Even if you can monetise your Social lists (likes, connections and followers) you’ll discover that you need around 20 times as many contacts to generate the same revenue and value as a straightforward email list.

So 100,000 followers can only be expected to generate the same response and sales revenue as an email list of 5,000 prospects and customers. At best! The experts don’t tell you that!

Organic Reach

Facebook organic reach is in decline, some might say freefall. According to Social@Ogilvy organic reach has fallen from 16% in 2012 to around 6% in 2014. Creating content on Facebook can be like building your house on rented land – someone else has ultimate control.

Right Media, Wrong Media?

Social Media is “social”! It is not a commercial media. Developing a strong Social Media following then asking “for the order” is like going to the Pub and asking your neighbours, friends and mates to buy from you – wrong question, wrong people, wrong time and the wrong place.

Search

If people want to buy they search or they “discover”. If you ambush people by trying to sell to them in a social setting you risk upsetting them.

The largest search engines are much more likely to deliver a healthy ROI because they are used by buyers – people actively looking to spend money on what you sell.

Targeting

Does your target market even engage with Social Media that much, if at all? I always do a quick “after the break” straw poll during seminars. Who, I ask – posted, tweeted or checked their Facebook or Twitter account during the break? One or two hands rise (at most). OK, I say, I have another question. Who checked their emails? Almost every hand rises.

The reality is, if you want to reach the kind of people who attend my seminars and workshops (CEO’s, MD’s and Owner Managers) then they aren’t paying attention to their Social Media accounts even if they have them.

If you’re targeting this group and spending time on Social Media – you’re wasting your money. On the other hand, if we’re targeting 20 year olds then the reverse could be true.

The ‘experts’ say “you need a Social Media strategy or be left behind”. Really?

Left behind what exactly?

Here are five ‘reality check’ questions to ask BEFORE you spend significant time or money on Social Media marketing…

1. If my target audience aren’t using Social Media as a way to find providers of the products or services that I sell – how will I be left behind?

2. If I set up a Social Media strategy and allocate time and money (salaries for example) for investing in it – who is reading it, what action does it prompt them to take and what is my return?And crucially…

3. What about the money I could have made had I invested the time in creating better website pages that attract more searchers (people actually looking for what I sell)?

4. What about the money I could have made if I invested “Social Media” time in creating fantastic communications to email to my list of prospects and customers (emails have up to 20 times better ROI)?

5. What about the money I could have made if I invested the “Social Media” spend on building my Email Marketing list (which outperforms a Facebook list by 20:1 in terms of revenue)?

Good is the enemy of ‘best’.

By allowing significant time and effort to be ‘invested’ in Social Media marketing it might well feel good, it may well create great ‘buzz’ and ‘vibe’ – but is it the very BEST use of scarce and valuable time and money?

Does it even reach your target market, let alone get read and prompt meaningful actions?

You Can’t Live on “Likes” and “Followers”.

Next time a hot shot marketer tells you that you need a Social Media strategy and comes up with a “must buy” proposal – then offer to share your success with them.

They can have 50% of your Likes and Followers as an additional incentive to reward them for their breakthrough marketing strategy.

Hmmm! It’s pretty tough to live on “likes” and “followers”!

But that’s exactly what you’re buying if you spend your valuable time and money on Social Media.

So what DOES work?

Fair question. And one that we’ll develop this more in future Results Reports.

For now, based on real world results for real world businesses here is a snapshot of 2014 marketing strategies that work day in day out for businesses of all types … and a tried and tested 7-STEP SEQUENCE of client acquisition and conversion…

1. Drive Traffic
The fastest, cheapest, most accountable way to generate new enquiries through your website and to build your list is still Google AdWords.

It is cheaper and more dependable than SEO. It reaches the largest market of active buyers in the world. It is measurable, scalable and massively successful.

Google AdWords and Email Marketing are the two stand out marketing breakthroughs of the 21st Century. Social Media trails in the dust when it comes to actual results.

2. Get the Contact Details of Visitors
Creating valuable “packages” of information (Packaged Information) can be like putting your AdWords, Email Marketing, Direct Mail and Advertising on steroids.

Buyers crave information. They expect to get information before that have to choose and buy. Scratch that itch and rewards are huge.

With Packaged Information you can out-compete your competition on Google, your Website suddenly starts converting like never before, your lists explode in size, your Email Campaigns wake up the “sleeping buyers” on your list and cost per enquiry on your advertising plummets.

3. Build Your List
Tony Blair (remember him?) famously stated that his three priorities were Education, Education, Education.

In business your three priorities for developing profitable, growing and reliable sales revenue are List, List, List.

Your business future is inextricably linked to the size, value, responsiveness of your prospect and customer lists and your relationship with them.

4. Nurturing Communications Plan
A carefully thought through and immaculately executed Communications Plan for nurturing and converting your prospects is the best way to extract the maximum potential and lifetime value from your lists.

A carefully crafted Communications Plan based on Email Marketing is cheap (a fraction of the cost of doing it 10 to 15 years ago before Email Marketing came along), incredibly responsive, fast to react and could be the MOST important source of new revenue in your business.

5. Offers & Conversion
The most effective and cheapest way to realise the full revenue potential of your prospect list is to create and send carefully crafted and outstanding Marketing Emails including articles, valuable information and offers to your list to convert prospects into clients.

6. Nurturing Clients
Once you have a customer it is 5 to 7 times easier and cheaper to sell to them again than to any other list – as long as you have a strategy for deepening, enlarging and enhancing the relationship with this list.

7. Cross Selling & Up Selling System
Develop a strategy for going back to existing clients (alongside your nurturing) again and again to create additional new sales, to generate larger repeat orders and to get more new clients through referral. This is a MASSIVE (often untapped) source of additional revenue.

So, Will Social Media Ever Work?

Yes it will, but only for some businesses, for some products and for some target markets.

Today, spending a lot of time and money on Social Media is simply a ‘vanity’ project for most businesses – consuming a lot of time and resource for little return.

Here are some specialist applications and special case exceptions (to the above) that are valid Social Media marketing strategies…

Special Case Exemptions

As with everything there are some special case exemptions where Social Media not only works and delivers return on investment, but can deliver sensational results.

Here are some examples…

Your Target Market is all Over Social Media – a client of ours runs a nightclub with a dedicated Facebook following. When they post details of upcoming events they get great results because their target market is on Social Media and they are fully engaged with the client.

Facebook Pay-Per-Click – this is working brilliantly for some businesses, especially with B2C products and services.

LinkedIn – can be an excellent tool for helping with networking and prospecting for sales professionals.

Twitter – can be a great way to get journalists to pick up your content and stories if you have a high profile brand or highly topical content.

Forums – forums with ‘niche’ audiences who are slap bang in your target market can be an excellent way to generate a following for your Blog and traffic to your website.

Customer Service & Brand Protection – if you have a high profile brand then investing in a specialist team to monitor and react to posts and comments can be an invaluable way to protect and defend your brand, and to enhance your customer service. Companies like Dell have excelled in this use of Social Media.

Credibility and Trust – having well set up and active Social Media accounts that are linked to your website can be valuable ‘trust factors’ that give potential buyers more confidence and enhance your credibility.

Recruitment – Social Media can be an effective channel for recruitment (especially LinkedIn) and can also support your other recruitment efforts.

Will Social Media Work for YOUR Business?

However, for the main, Social Media remains a frustrating enigma – it looks so promising, it seems to be ‘the future’, yet it delivers so little.

Even worse, because of the temptation to get into the ‘game’, Social Media often sucks ‘oxygen’, energy and valuable resources from other more valuable marketing efforts.

For the vast majority of businesses, spending time on marketing that does work and will deliver ROI such as creating sensational emails, great website content and highly optimised website landing pages is the best choice.

Good is the enemy of best – Social may seem like a good thing to be doing, but it needs to be challenged.

Is it the BEST way to spend that time and effort in the hunt for new clients, more sales and higher profits?

The post Will Social Media Ever Work for Your Business? first appeared on WD&M.

EXPOSED: The Truth About Social Media and Your Business?

When Google AdWords and Pay Per Click advertising came along 7 or 8 years ago, direct response, results based marketers like ourselves took to it like a duck to water. It has everything we love about marketing and more. It’s like direct marketing on steroids!

It’s measurable. It’s fast. You can exploit success easily – for months and years to come. You can identify and cut failure fast, so your mistakes are cheap. You even learn a lot from your failures. It suddenly made websites relevant, profitable and essential even for traditional bricks and mortar businesses.

It made history.

Today, because of Google AdWords, everyone is a direct marketer.

It kicked traditional brand lead, image focussed, “get your name out there” advertising and marketing into the long grass.

It busted the myth that you can’t measure ROI with advertising and marketing.

It demystified marketing, made it relevant, and shattered the carefully crafted illusion (decades of work by the advertising industry) that there is some kind of alchemy, art or “magical” skill required to create great advertising and marketing.

Direct marketers the world over cheered as the mainstream, above the line, advertisers got a whipping and scrambled to re-position themselves.

Of course, they have always been ROI focussed. Yeah right!

And then came Social Media.

Suddenly the mystique, the old magic, the “must have” aura was back.

For the last 2 or 3 years it’s been the darling of the advertising and marketing chattering classes.

It’s the future. Everyone is on Facebook. Twitter is the must engage with medium of the attention deficit age. Look – people spend more time on Facebook now than on watching TV. Today, we live in the two-screen world.

And the business community listened, tried to figure out what to do. Wondered what the strategy was – and got stuck in anyway.

Facebook Fan Pages, a Blog, Tweeting – suddenly we’re all doing it. If you’re not doing it, if you don’t have a strategy, if you don’t get it – prepared to be rolled.

And the direct marketing community, us included, went silent.

Suddenly the brand lead, awareness, “get your name out there” gang were back in business.

It has everything they’ve always loved about the advertising business.

It’s new, exciting, a buzz, mysterious, the future – in short it became a must have for every self respecting marketing budget holder.

Direct marketers like us watched, we listened, we read up, we tested, we listened some more.

And we’re still listening.

We’re listening for the shout of “Eureka” – waiting for someone to strike gold, and show us how you reliably and consistently turn the time and money invested in Social Media into real sales and profits.

And there have been some solid finds.
Facebook Pay-Per-Click is working brilliantly for some businesses. But as good as it is, it is a Social Media parasite, feeding on the beast itself, it is not the actual act of Social Media delivering the goods.
We acknowledge and appreciate the link building advantages that a Social Media strategy can bring to your Search Engine Optimisation efforts – but once again, it’s a parasite, it’s a good supporter of another strategy, not Social Media itself delivering the goods.
We hear about how big corporates like Dell “engage” with their customers online and through Social Media, with excellent results – but we don’t learn anything at all relevant for our SME businesses and clients.

We even have some clients with thousands, and tens of thousands of followers, and “likes” – who still can’t show a penny of revenue from Social Media.

And to be brutally honest, we start to feel a bit silly.

After all, we’re the self-proclaimed ‘gurus’, we’re the ‘go-to’ guys on marketing – why aren’t we shouting from the rooftops about Social Media and how it’s the next big thing.

But, in our saner moments we take comfort from the fact that we’re evidence based, results driven marketers. We base our decisions and recommendations on solid, proven, reliable evidence of success.

And as time goes by we develop a growing sense of awareness that it is not just us who have failed to see any breakthrough value in Social Media. There’s a quiet but growing sense of Social Media scepticism developing.

Maybe we’re seeing a “Social Media Spring”?

But, we stay open minded. We remain open to testing new and interesting innovations. We believe that it is highly likely that one of us will figure out a way to make Social Media really deliver.

Summing it all up, we believe that today there are a handful of Social Media strategies that make sense.

Here is our summary…

Social Media Strategy #1 – do nothing yet. Put your mind at ease, you are not missing the gold rush, you are not losing early mover advantage. Keep working on the things that work – your Google AdWords, your Website, your Direct Mail campaigns, Email Broadcasting…

Social Media Strategy #2 – start to test the medium. Listen to the gurus, start to run some tests. But keep it real. Only devote a small percentage of your marketing resources – I’d say at most 5%, and make sure it is time and money that you don’t HAVE to see a return from. It is education and testing, not a substitute for marketing that must work.

Social Media Strategy #3 – set up a Facebook Fan Page to support your Facebook pay per click advertising. There is good evidence showing that it improves your conversion rates.

Social Media Strategy #4 – use Social Media to support your link building efforts for Search Engine Optimisation.

Social Media Strategy #5 – become a Social Media expert and start selling your training courses. It’s the best way we’ve seen yet to make money from Social Media.

Social Media Strategy #6 – you tell us! We know from experience that the views expressed here are controversial. Not everyone agrees with our reticence. Not everyone agrees that just looking for ROI is the only, or best metric. And maybe you have figured out how to make real, reliable and significant returns from Social Media for mainstream businesses. If so, we’d love to hear your story – get in touch.

I hope I haven’t shocked you. I hope you don’t think we’re total Social Media sceptics (we’re not – we enthusiastically use the bits that work).

But above all, I hope you now have some clarity. You can stop worrying about what you’re not doing with Social Media and safely concentrate on the things that work – at least until it changes.

And when it does, we’ll be the first to let you know.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you to get more from your business, please call on 01536 461 597, or contact us online.

You can also sign up to our free newsletter to get regular information on strategies that will help you get more from your business

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