social media marketing

Tips to Boost your Organic Digital Marketing: TikTok

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Two phones on a white bed showing both the TikTok logo and it's profile page. It is marketing the app.

Looking for a new area to branch out in digital marketing? TikTok is currently the Number 1 social media app on the planet. Boasting a whopping 1.4 billion users worldwide, it is currently expected to read 1.8 billion by the end of 2022. Originally launched as a simple short form video app, it gained $4.6 billion in revenue in 2021. That’s a 142% increase year-on-year. With all this growth it’s no wonder that TikTok is currently the place to be for digital marketing.

But how exactly can this app and its massive user base be best utilised organically? Is it guaranteed that your brand will “blow up” on TikTok? There’s no plan for virality unfortunately, but let’s take a look at some tips to get your TikTok marketing strategy up and running.

1. Create your TikTok channel and make some content

Where better to start that getting yourself on the platform itself. Setting up a channel is as easy as with any other social media platform, and you can begin creating content right away. Kit out your profile with a branded profile photo and some biography information. If users click through to your profile, they want to know who you are at a single glance, so make it easy for them.

Content can be created easily, quickly, and with basically no budget – very accessible for start-ups or newer brands. Now all you’ve got to do is make some videos! Start by finding a trending sound, a TikTok “challenge,” or a viral hashtag to get your content out there. Take advantage of the apps in-built editing equipment to make your video look as good as it can be. Don’t forget an engaging caption and some more hashtags will really help to boost that video.

TikTok favours authentic, relatable, organic content, so posting flashy brand videos here won’t do any favours. Set some realistic posting goals to begin with as well. 2-3 videos a week should be great to start with. Keep tabs on what content does well out of those posted in that week and perhaps build on those specific topics. Make sure to create content to truly resonate with your target audience and encourage engagement. Remember, younger people especially want to feel like they’re speaking to a person rather than a brand.

2. Marketing yourself to your audience

Speaking of engagement, zoning in on a target audience for your content can be incredibly beneficial in the long run. While it’s important not to pigeonhole yourself too early on, a key audience will eventually evolve, and you’ll find it much easier to market directly toward them. This is where a bit of prior research could really help – what kind of content are your target audience after? Do they enjoy silly lip synchs? Transition videos? Spending some time on the app and getting to know the persona of your audience can help your content grow much faster.

Pro-Tip: Utilise the video comment function. If a supporter asks a question in your comments, reply with a bespoke video filmed just for them. It’s a very personable approach that may end up creating a loyal follower to your brand but will also show new users how engaged you are with your audience. This is a very useful tool to connect with both warm and cold audiences and encourage people to interact with your comment section more. Just remember than even in video format, adhering to customer service best practices is key!

TikTok is also a great place to be to attract younger audience. This is something that could currently prove to be difficult on other social media platforms. According to its demographics, 25% of its users (the largest percentage) are between 10-19. Whilst insights say this age bracket is the least likely to participate in brand loyalty, it does state that this demographic is likely to be more loyal to any brands they do choose to follow. Definitely something to consider when deciding where to target your content.

While it may seem daunting potentially marketing to such a young age bracket, this is also a demographic that responds the best to TikTok’s primary method of marketing – influencers.

3. Utilising influencer marketing on TikTok

Influencer online states that 91% of 16-24 year olds credited influencer advertisements on social media as their reason for purchasing a product. This is a huge number of conversions on such a core market. If you’re looking to organically grow your brand on TikTok then you NEED to be looking into influencers as soon as possible.

Collaborating with an influencer is essentially collaborating with a TikTok expert. As someone who uses the app daily, or as a full-time profession, they will know the best way to market your brand. Promoting your brand to a large, highly engaged following will see that your marketing is taken care of. This will also help to promote brand advocacy and loyalty to their mass of followers; hearing from someone they trust that this brand is good will ultimately lead them right to you.

TikTok has established its own Creator Marketplace that helps to link up brands and creators. Some smaller creators may do some marketing for free or in exchange of products but expect to have some budget ready for this stage. Influencing is its own career now! Again, make sure to do some research beforehand and see which influencers best suit the tone and goals of your brand – having a fashion influencer promoting tech isn’t exactly going to work out well. It’s all about what fits the best.

Some brands even get lucky and have influencers advocating for them before they’ve even reached out. While this is some great free marketing, don’t bank on it. Do your research, reach out to relevant users, and engage their audience – you can’t plan for virality!

Conclusion

In essence, if your brand isn’t on TikTok right now, then get it on there ASAP. This fast-growing app is seeing more growth in its first year than Instagram did in its first seven. It’s important that all marketers know how to jump-on and utilise this new tech whilst it’s still on the up. This is also the perfect place to perfect organic content and original, creative ideas. Go wild, have fun – there’s no telling how much good can come of it!

Looking for more help with social media? Check out the relevant articles below:

Digital Marketing Apprenticeship: Boosting Social Media Engagement

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Social media engagement

What is Social Media Engagement?

A term heard throughout the apprenticeship of a digital marketer. A measure of how well an online business or brand is doing in its social media efforts. Engagements are shares, likes, comments and any other interactions. Historically, engagement has been a common measure of social media success.

How is it calculated?

Total engagements / Total followers X 100

Tips for better Social Media Engagement

Know your audience – Research into who it is you want to target and find out their interests, what platforms they use and at what times. There is so much you can learn from researching the target audience!

Create interactive content – The more engaging the better! how many times have you gotten sucked into random BuzzFeed quizzes? Interactive content is great because it can create emotions of curiosity, excitement and fun.

Use a social media management tool – Tools such as Hootsuite or Meta business Suite not only allow marketers to plan and schedule content best to fit their audience but also provide analytical features. This means you can track how well campaigns and posts are doing for future success!

Know the difference between Reactive and Proactive Marketing – Marketing campaigns that are proactive require specific preparation before release, while marketing campaigns that are reactive respond spontaneously to current events. Use both accordingly!

Respond quickly to queries – Customer service is key. You want the customer to feel valued always respond in a professional, timely and friendly manor. Keep inline with bet industry practice and your business or brand social media policy.

Somecontent ideas for boosting social media engagement:

  • Host Q&A’s
  • Repost / share relevant content
  • Use National days
  • Follow viral trends
  • Host a challenge
  • Repurpose old content

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Top 6 Social Media DO’S and DON’TS

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Social Media

The prospect of using social media for business can be daunting. However, having a social media presence is something that today’s consumers expect from brands, which means that a lack of it usually rings alarm bells. 

But simply having a social media presence is not enough; you need to know how to use it properly and stay on top of best practices if you want it to impress your customers and yield a strong ROI. When used and managed properly, social media can help boost brand awareness for your business, drive traffic to your website, grow your customer base and even increase revenue.

With these attractive prospects in mind, we have compiled a list of the top 6 social media dos and don’ts to help you avoid common mistakes and get the most out of your social media business profile.

1 – DO set clear goals and objectives

If you’re looking to achieve a strong ROI from your business social media activities then you need to start by setting clear objectives. These should reflect and complement your overall business goals, and can be anything from driving conversions to building brand awareness and improving customer experience. Setting numerical values and deadlines can also help keep you focused – for example, you could set an objective to increase landing page traffic by 20% by the end of the next business quarter.

Without setting clear goals to measure against, you will never truly know if your social media activity is having any tangible effects and, even if it is, you won’t be able to prove it.

2 – DO analyse and track activity

As you’ve set goals and objectives for your social media performance, it follows that you should also have an established system for analysing and tracking your activity and results. There are many different tools and social media management platforms to help you do this, including Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Socialbakers, Google Analytics and, of course, the built-in analytics tools on each social media platform. With these tools you can track everything from engagement (clicks, likes, shares, comments) to referral traffic, assisted conversions and revenue, plus a whole lot more.

Measurement is potentially the most crucial ‘DO’ in using social media for business. It can help you prove your successes, guide future campaigns and pinpoint any failures so you can learn and quickly change direction if necessary.

3 – DO make good use of social media advertising and promoted content

There are two ways to use social media for business: organic (which is free to use and publish) and paid. Paid social media is an extremely cost-effective method of promoting your business, costing a fraction of the price of traditional advertising methods. Paying just a few pounds can significantly boost the reach of your social media posts and content, ensuring it is seen by more of the right people at the right times and in the right places. Assuming the posts you’re promoting contain useful content with clear calls to action, this additional exposure can help drive more conversions and revenue for your business than if you relied on organic social media posts alone.

THAT’S ALL FOR THE DOS, NOW LET’S MOVE ON TO THE DON’TS…

4 – DON’T overdo it

Posting too often on your business social profiles can be just as harmful as not posting often enough. According to research by Sprout Social, 46% of social media users will unfollow a brand for posting too many promotional messages on their profiles, which means you need to restrict your output or risk losing customers.

5 – DON’T use all social media platforms for the sake of it

Not all platforms are necessarily going to complement or suit your business type, ethos or objectives. You should avoid setting up profiles across all channels just for the sake of having a presence there, as this can dilute your brand and do more harm than good. Know your audience and choose carefully.

6 – DON’T get hung up on numbers  

And finally, you should never get too fixated on numbers when it comes to your business social media profiles. This is where quality over quantity really comes into play. Often the real value is found in the amount of engagement you’re receiving, and the type of people you’re receiving it from. These are the things that can make you the real money, so pay more attention to these instead.

Find out how to implement a well-executed social media marketing strategy here!
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The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media

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Working in the social media industry, there are some things you need to avoid and some things you need to do to help you get on the right track of using social effectively to help you increase traffic, leads and sales…

What is social media?

Social media is a digital tool that allows users to quickly create and share content with the public. It  encompasses a wide range of websites and apps, including Facebook and Twitter, which specialise in sharing links with short written messages.

social media, iphone, business, social media tips, instagram, twitter, linkedin, tiktok

What you should do…

Post often – When planning your content it pays to have a strategy in place. You can then work around around retail and marketing holidays, and plot action around your business goals – from increasing enquiries, to boosting awareness.

Having a strategy and content plan in mind will help you not to miss any important awareness days and help you to stay consistent.

Be authentic – Being authentic is the key to establishing an online business identity. Bring out your personality as people buy from people.

Use both organic and paid social – The best social profiles use a considered combination of organic (free) and paid content. Paid social is a way to boost your business by increasing your reach and exposure, and reaching your targeting with more specific metrics. If spending money on ads it’s important you direct all traffic to your website through the use of clear funnels.  

Engage with your followers – All comments on all platforms should be responded to – even negative comments can be used to your advantage, showing followers a professional, reactive and open side to your business. Sharing followers posts could result in collaboration and encourage with engaging content using story content.

Experiment with channels – It may be tempting to try every new social media platform but not all will be relevant to you and your goals. Focus on where your audience will be and aim to attract them through those platforms. For example, if your target audience is a young crowd, then TikTok would be a great platform to use, but LinkedIn – not so much.  

Use call to actions – Always add a call to action on posts, where do you want the traffic from your post to go? Your website? Your bio? Let them know as this encourages sales.

laptop, social media, business, instagram, tiktok, twitter, facebook, linkedin

What you shouldn’t do…

Be spammy – Engaging with other’s content and posting is great but keep everything in moderation. Nobody wants their social media feeds to be filled by a single account, if you do then they may end up unfollowing you.

Obsess over figures – Of course we all want a high follower count on platforms, but this isn’t the be all and end all. It’s important to remember that brand awareness and growing your network is a long-term effort. At the end of the day, it’s quality over quantity, you would rather have a few engaged followers rather than several irrelevant ones.

Write in all caps or over/under use emojis – Be aware of the tone you’re setting with your words to your audience. All caps are visually alarming and insinuates that you’re angry or aggressive. Also, not using emojis can come across as very plain and static – you want followers to understand there is a person behind the screen, not a robot.

Demand engagement – Avoid asking followers to directly share your content or visit your website. Instead, leave a link to your website or ask them to head to the link in your bio.

We hope this blog gave you a further insight into the do’s and don’ts of social media, for more industry tips and knowledge, head to our social pages.

6 Reasons Why a Career in Digital Marketing Would be Perfect for You!

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Social Media

Everything is going online! Companies in all sectors are focusing on developing a digital online presence.The digital economy is growing much faster than the offline economy, and so you should use this to your advantage and get the Digital Marketing skills you need to get hired!

Here are 6 reasons why

1. There are so many different diverse roles

There are a lot of different area’s in marketing today, including the following;

  • Social Media Marketing: Using an array of social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to target audiences.
  • Offline Marketing: This includes physical marketing techniques such as ads, billboards, radio, and print media.
  • Email Marketing: Developing relationships with clients by creating newsletters which bolster your brand.
  • Influencer Marketing: This involves creating endorsements and sponsorship’s to promote your brand.

If you are unsure as to what area of marketing would suit you best, some good questions you could ask yourself are: Are you a more analytical or creative person? Do you enjoy thinking about the campaign or executing it?

2. It’s a fast growing industry

Marketing Hiring Trends found that about 69% of companies are in the demand for marketers. They also found the big gap between the supply and demand of those with the right skills for digital marketing. The demand stood at around 59%, but the supply was only 19%. These figures can show you the demand of digital marketers and that qualifications will not go to waste!

According to LinkedIn, the “Digital Marketing Specialist” role is among the top 10 most in-demand jobs, with 860,000 job openings. The most requested experience in digital marketing includes social media, content strategy, SEO, analytics, and more.

These figures can show you the demand of digital marketers and that qualifications will not go to waste!

3. It is fun and creative

A career in digital marketing allows your creative side to flourish. Creative thinking can be a powerful and important tool in the marketing industry. Did you know that creativity has loads of benefits that can have a positive impact on your daily routine?

  • Creative thinking helps you see new original opportunities
  • Helps you be innovative
  • Creates unique solutions
  • Helps your campaign stand out
  • Helps you create a meaningful connection with your customer
  • Helps your leadership skills
  • Let’s you be more agile

Creativity is one of the key factors of success in the marketing world, and therefore a Digital Marketing Apprenticeship allows you to put your skills to the test.

4. Marketing salaries are higher than the national average

Digital marketing jobs tend to be well paid. The average starting salary for a digital marketing job on the Indeed website is around the £24,000 – £26,000 mark.

When a job is in demand, that means there’s more opportunity to negotiate remuneration whether you are working in-house or as a freelancer. So long as you show how hard you work and how intelligent you are through the job search process, you’ll be able to bid higher and higher the more experience you get!

5. It’s very social

In digital marketing jobs, you’ll have the opportunity to work with several different teams & individuals. There is always something new to do and new people to talk to.

Whether it’s a new client, a college, or finding fun ways to engage and expand your audience, anyone with an interest in working with people will love working in digital marketing.

6. Working in digital marketing gives you versatile skills

 If you choose a career path or specialization in this field and you decide to pivot later, you’ll likely only need a little training in order to make the switch. You will have created a well-rounded skill set with Technical skills, digital copywriting, editing, data analysis, for example.In this sense, you can build on existing skills while still learning new ones, but still stay in the same field.

There’s plenty of choices, here, and ongoing learning opportunities, where different skills fit together in different ways.

Conclusion

As you can see there are so many reasons why a career in digital marketing would be beneficial for you. Whilst it’s fun and creative, it also gives you the opportunity to have a competitive salary in one of the largest growing industries.

Find out more about Digital Marketing Apprenticeships here

Organic vs. Paid Social Media

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Young people sitting on stairs using smartphones for organic and paid social media

Weighing up the options between paid and organic social media? Not sure where to start? We’ll save you some legwork: you’ll find everything you need to know in this expert guide.

As a digital marketing apprentice, social media implementation is crucial. For instance, you’ll need to show that you have a variety of skills and the ability to run digital campaigns across different social media platforms. In this guide we’ve outlined the main differences between organic and paid social media, as well as including some examples to help you understand better. We’ve also chucked in some useful links to help get you started to becoming a social media wizard!

The key to social media is being social

Eli Fennell

What is Organic Social Media?

Organic social media refers to the free content that all users, including business and brands, share with each other on feeds. For example, this could include posts, photos, videos, memes and stories.

As a brand, when you post organically to your account, you can expect that people who see it are:

  • A percentage of your followers (also known as organic reach)
  • Your follower’s followers
  • People following any hashtags you use

Brands use organic social to:

  • Establish their personality and voice
  • Build relationships through informative, entertaining or inspiring content
  • Engage customers at every stage of the customer life cycle journey

Example of typical organic content from a business:

Pantone leveraging user-generated content

Pantone excels at the strategic use of user-generated content to build a stunning feed. For example, the brand uses aesthetically pleasing, high quality content to grab the audiences attention. Additionally, the short, punny copy doesn’t detract from the image.

What is Paid Social Media?

Paid social media involves brands paying money to social networks such as Facebook and Instagram to have their content shared with specific audiences. Paid social posts will show up in the feeds of whichever audience you decide to target and can be filtered by demographics, likes, interests and more.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is one of the most common methods of charging for this type of promotion.

Businesses and organisations use paid promotion on social media to:

  • Raise brand awareness and attract new followers
  • Promote new deals, content, events
  • Generate leads
  • Drive conversions

Example of typical paid content from a business:

example of paid social media
Moz stands out with colourful ad creative

Similarly to the the organic social example, Moz uses bright colours to stand out in the audience’s feed. It grabs the reader’s attention with bold colour choices. However, this ad is targeted to people who like marketing and marketing agencies, so a case study link makes sense here. Moreover, the strong, minimal copy gets the point across quickly and efficiently.

While paid social and organic social vary in their scope it is useful to know the benefits and drawbacks of each.

The verdict on Organic vs. Paid Social Media

Both organic and paid social media suit different businesses with different priorities in different situations. If your business doesn’t have the budget to implement a paid social media strategy, then try focusing on organic social media. Write thoughtful content and actively engage with your customers online. However, if your business has a sizeable marketing budget, prioritise your paid social media efforts to immediately spread brand awareness and draw specific audiences to your profile.

Ideally, you will be able to find a way to incorporate both methods into your overall social media strategy to improve your online presence. To take your social media marketing skills to the next level, take a look at more of our digital marketing blogs to become a social media pro!

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5 Reasons to implement social media into your marketing strategy

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Social Media Marketing Overview

Social media is growing by the day. With over 45 million active social media users in the UK, there is a whole market waiting for you to tap into. Marketing your products and services through social media is a simple and free way to raise awareness for your business. Express yourself with the complete creative freedom to show your audience more about your mission statement, core values and culture. Social media marketing enables you to grow brand awareness, provides customer interaction and increases traffic to your site. Read on to find out our five reasons for implementing social media into your marketing strategy.

  1. Grow Brand Awareness
  2. Engage With Customers
  3. Cost-Effective
  4. Market Awareness
  5. Increase Site Traffic
Image displaying different social media platforms used for social media marketing.

1. Grow Brand Awareness

Brand visibility is an integral part of any marketing strategy. Social media offers a way to increase your brand awareness across an array of platforms, connecting you to new audiences and potential customers. Given the vast quantity of users, adding social media to your marketing mix is a must.

Being seen regularly by customers can help build their trust which, if done consistently can lead to repeat purchases and visits to your site.

It’s important that when a new customer visits your site for the first time, they can see that the brand is reputable. Seeing your presence and legitimate following on social media will help… offer a level of validity that can lead to potential customers putting their trust in you and potential relationships being created.

2. Engage With Customers

The more you communicate with your audience, the higher chance you have of converting them into a customer and building customer loyalty.

Replying to comments left by your audience is key to retaining followers. Making sure you respond in the correct tone and manner, whilst also being prompt, will show customers you care. Thankfully you can answer any problems almost instantaneously through social media. As easy as it may be to reply to general queries, you must also respond to negative feedback in the same manner aforementioned. Providing insightful responses can even help to show other members of your audience that perhaps the negative comment may not be an accurate representation of your brand.

Some of the best platforms to engage with customers are:

  1. LinkedIn
  2. Twitter
  3. Facebook
  4. YouTube
  5. Instagram

While responding to comments may be time-consuming, it is certainly worth it. Growing relationships can help build customer loyalty. A direct impact of customer loyalty may be customers recommending you to their peers.

3. Cost-Effective

Social media marketing is perhaps the most cost-effective method of advertising. The reason being is that it can be completely free to create an account on the most popular platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter.

If you do decide to pay for ads/promotion it is extraordinarily cheaper than alternatives such as magazines, mailshots and radio. In today’s society, it is also a more popular medium than the other alternatives mentioned. Do you sacrifice the quality of the results? The answer is no, social media advertising still offers the same level of awareness and engagement which further verifies that social media marketing is a must for your marketing mix.

One drawback is the time you will have to dedicate to creating content. Engaging and insightful content isn’t easy to produce and can take up a lot of resources, however, the return-on-investment social media marketing provides shows that this is time well spent.  

4. Market Awareness

As a business, it’s important to understand the needs and wants of your customers. Social media provides a way to monitor this. By monitoring the content your customers are engaging with you can see what interests them. This might have never been seen without having a social media presence, making social media marketing an extremely useful research tool.

Not only can you monitor customers, but you can also monitor the activity of competitors. You can use competitors to see what content and products are popular with similar audiences. You can find out if a competitor is using different keywords to you and if they’re taking advantage of these keywords and hashtags then you now have a chance to see which are performing well and in turn implement them for your own business.

Run polls and ask questions to find out more about your customers’ needs. Spark up conversations with customers. Find out their wants directly and you may even have a chance to reply imminently to any feedback they offer, ensuring they aren’t left feeling confused or helpless.  

5. Increase Site Traffic

Perhaps the best reason for implementing social media into your marketing mix is the countless opportunities for driving traffic to your site. Posting about products and services and linking back to your site is a great way to do this. The more engaging the content you post is, the better the interaction you’re likely to receive.

Post about your blogs, products and services through different social media platforms and link back to your site so any engagement with the post leads back to you. The level of engagement determines the amount of traffic to your site where you can then promote further products and services.

Using engaging content such as polls and videos can increase the likelihood of a post being read, shared and engaged with. If your content gets shared with new audiences then there will be even more awareness for your posts which in turn will increase the number of potential visitors your site gets.

Conclusion

Social media is rapidly becoming more popular and opportunities to grow brand awareness will only keep on coming. Remember your competitors are already increasing the value of their brands through social media marketing and interacting with audiences that you are missing out on. The sooner you implement social media into your marketing mix, the faster you will see the results reflected in your brand.

Check out some other Digital Apprenticeships blogs here.

5 Reasons Why Blogging Is Essential For Your Marketing Strategy

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why-blogging-is-essential-image

When it comes to marketing it is important to ensure that you are always up to date with the latest trends and marketing techniques. A consistent marketing tactic that has been used for several years is blogging, although it has developed along the way. Some people may view blogging as an old-fashioned approach however when used to its full capabilities it becomes an essential element for any business. Regardless of what genre of company you run, it’s vital that you have a blog and here are 5 reasons why.

  1. Blogs can help to attract new customers
  2. Blogs provide an insight into your brand
  3. Blogging improves SEO
  4. Blog content helps with your social presence
  5. Blogging boosts brand awareness

Blogs Can Help To Attract New Customers

Blogging is a key component to any digital marketing strategy, and it is proven to increase leads as well as direct more traffic to your website. Provided that your blog posts are well-written and informative readers should be able to gain an insight into your business and the products or services you have to offer. Blogging not only provides a platform for creative and informative content but it also allows you to showcase calls-to-action that make it easy to convert into leads.

Blogs Provide An Insight Into Your Brand

A blog provides a platform to tell your brands story, it is a great way of giving consumers a better insight into your company, employees and the product or service you offer. Writing a blog post is an opportunity for marketers to share the brand identity through tone of voice and personality which will in time build up a customers trust and increase brand likability.

Demonstrates how to create a blog post

Blogging Improves SEO

Content is key when it comes to producing blog posts and as marketing has evolved blogging has played a huge part in improving a company’s SEO performance. When you develop a blog, you are able to reach a wider range of search queries. Blogging is great for generating broader search results that your website alone would not be able to attract.

Adding a blog to your website is an easy, yet effective way of increasing the amount keywords and search queries you can rank for on Google. This makes it easier for potential customers find YOU!

Blog Content Helps With Your Social Presence

Creating regular blog posts for your business can help to direct people to your social media platforms. Every time you are publishing a new article you are producing helpful content that people can share across various social networks which in turn will help with brand awareness. Blog content helps to boost social presence by driving new visitors to your blog via different social channels.

Blogging Boosts Brand Awareness

When you product blog content on a regular basis this will naturally increase your brand visibility. It can only take one relatable post for your post to go viral which will in turn increase your audience. Blogging allows you to determine an authentic voice and persona behind the brand image and logo.

The best way to grow your business is by providing the information that customers are searching for. Blog posts can broaden your site visitors while still staying within an appropriate target audience.

To Conclude

Whether you’re a small business owner or blogger, your blog is an extension of the company’s online presence. It provides value by providing information on what sets them apart from others in the industry. It also showcases products that can help people achieve success with whatever goal might be important enough for this purpose!

A blog is a great way to reduce your marketing spend, increase website traffic and generate new leads. But most importantly for businesses: blogging provides value in the form of content that helps build strong customer relationships!

Social Media Trends To Look Out For In 2022

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Two girls looking at their phones over each others shoulders

The social media landscape is an ever changing beast in the world of marketing & advertising. All businesses both small and large must keep their finger steadily to the pulse. To stay savvy is to stay aware of any new trends that may pop up across social media; then find new and interesting ways to leverage that trend before their counterparts.

To help businesses stay ahead of social media trends in 2022, we have compiled a list of the trends that are already making waves this year. Let’s jump straight in shall we?

TikTok Takeover

TikTok has only gone from strength to strength over the last year – and can definitely no longer just be viewed as the platform just for teens. This social media space, born from the love of short-form video, has garnered a huge reach. Further, according to a report by Hubspot, this undeniably fast growth is set to only lead to further dominance. With TikTok’s launch of new tools, Ads & profiles just focused at businesses it should be no real surprise that 24% of businesses believe that TikTok is the most effective social media platform (taken from a recent study from Hootesuite). That is 700% increase from the prior year, overtaking Pinterest & WhatsApp. The likes of Facebook and Instagram were still ranked the highest in perceived effectiveness – but it is clear they definitely have some strong competition.

“The continued rise of TikTok is unquestionable. The platform offers such a low barrier to entry when it comes to producing creative, bitesize video content, whilst offering the opportunity of huge organic reach & engagement. You can also repurpose the videos & share them on other platforms like LinkedIn, like this. Some of the TikTok videos I’ve shared on LinkedIn have helped generate hundreds of thousands of revenue for our video & social media marketing agency”.

Dan Knowlton – Co Founder & CMO at Knowlton

Paid Ads

With organic reach becoming more and more inaccessible and the phasing out of cookie tracking from Google by 2023  – businesses are having to use other means to reach their desired audience and perhaps even rethink their overarching marketing strategies.

Social media and advertising has matured over the last few years, with marketers not only being able to reach far greater audiences, but also fully integrate the paid social strategy within their wider marketing plans. Not only this social platforms are the key to a treasure trove of data that allows advertisers to reach consumers in even more personalised and effective way. 51% of marketers in fact said that they were expecting their paid social budget to increase this year – with only 10% were not running ads at all (Hootesuite). Paid social ads are no doubt going to be a crucial and growing part of digital marketing for 2022.

User Generated Content

User generated content (USG) is a great way to interact with your customer base, whilst also being provided with (if done properly) a steady flow of ready made content. With the rise of things like ad blockers, it can be tricky to still reach customers, USG cleverly gets around that – as your customers become your advocated and advertisers. Additionally, when you connect with your customers in a positive way this helps generate trust and can even provide you with a new avenue for sales.

Social Media Selling

Social commerce can hardly be considered the kid on the block – but in 2022 it is set to really dominate. This is confirmed from statistics taken from Instagram, which suggest that 70% of ‘shopping enthusiasts’ use the platform to find new products. With brands testing upgraded functionality, for instance Pinterest with their addition of buyable pins, or TikTok where you can now be a registered seller, social selling will be at the forefront of an effective social strategy.

“2022 will see an uptick in social selling as sales teams transition from face-to-face to remote selling and new-age buyers preferring digital channels for making a purchase.”

Shaleen Sehhgal – Digital & Social Media Expert

Customer Service Through Social Media

Building and maintaining strong relationships with customers has always been an important part of running a successful business. While it can be challenging, this is still something companies are keen on pursuing. The key difference now is that now the conversation is being held on social media, and offers another means to engage and communicate with your customers. Over this year it is likely that this trend of using social media for customer service will grow – with a focus on going back to basics.

Influencer Marketing Coming Of Age

Influencer marketing has to some degree benefitted from the pandemic, where many companies struggled to get in front of their customer base, social media starlets if anything had even more reach. This made influencers an ever-more valuable commodity for large businesses, which has helped this form of marketing to grow exponentially. Influencer marketing has now definitely matured into an effective marketing methodology. Within that methodology, there is an abundance of opportunities that most companies would be foolish to not try and seize.

“Influencer marketing is no longer about blindly throwing precious budget in search of influencers with large followings. It’s about collaborating with content creators and developing relationships with them for a variety of mutual benefits to their business and yours.”

Neal Schaffer – Author, The Age of Influence

Authenticity

Last, but definitely not least – Authenticity. It is so important now to show your audience that you are more than just a brand, that there is faces behind the company and that they care. People want to know who your employees are, what the company believes in and its values. Then, even more so how the company chooses to act upon those values. In social media especially all content should be honest and trustworthy, offering a level of transparency that makes the company feel much closer in reach to the customers they serve.

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