We’ve all heard of the social media giants. But what about the social media sites that are localised to a country, or two countries?
If you’re trying to break into international markets and are looking for new social media platforms to help you – this post is for you.
Happy New Year!
It can be tough constantly having to come up with new ways to be engaging online.
Especially if your business relies on social media as one of its key marketing channels.
So this January, we’ve made the hard work easier for you by coming up with 3 new ways to give your social media a bit of a jolt-start this 2019.
We all love stories – and it’s not just up to writers to do them. Some of the best performing social posts of 2018 were ‘live-tweet’ stories, where audiences followed a situation as it unfolded in real time.
Now this might sound complicated. After all, what have you got to tell a story about?
Well, depending on your field, how about these ideas?
We talked about the ‘white noise’ social media posts in 2018, and we definitely do not want to carry those through to 2019!
Instead of looking at social media as some kind of broadcast opportunity, focus instead on seeing it as an opportunity to hand-pick what you want to show off about yourself/your business/your brand.
In fact, studies have shown that having less content can promote higher engagement in each content piece.
We all know that building own brand often includes networking, regardless of your industry. But how about partnering up with someone in order to take your social media to the next level this year?
Working with someone else in your field (or in the wider sphere of your industry) gets their audience in front of yours, and your audience in front of theirs. You could do this as a one-off (perhaps doing short-form video content, or an image series)
Have you got new ways that you’ll be spicing up your social media feeds this year? Let us know in the comments below!
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
I know what it’s like. Christmas is coming and you’re busy – you’re shopping, visiting family. Having one-too-many glasses of mulled wine. Your work mojo goes down the closer to Turkey Day we get – and sure enough, you’ll find yourself a bit less interested in doing the normal “admin” tasks, like keeping on top of your social media presence.
But it doesn’t have to be hard. If you’re smart, you can clock off on December 24th and not clock back in until January 1st. Whilst still keeping your social media accounts as lively and fresh as ever.
How?
Now anyone with a passion for radio will know that if you sat behind your microphone and read straight off a script all day, your listeners would be bored as heck.
That’s because writing a blog and actually doing a radio show (or podcast) are two wildly different things.
When we speak, we make fun little inflections with our voice and odd sounds as we pause and try and remember the word we’re looking for.
When we write, we’re doing it at our own time and at our own pace, (and we can totally just Google that word).
So why on earth then are we telling you to combine oil and water into a Blogcast?
Hashtags tend to be all over the place on Instagram. It’s hashtag city over there. Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be a little bit more reserved. A bit more chill.
But does that mean that hashtags don’t matter on Twitter?
We know you’re busy – August is nuts for anyone performing. If you’re not touting your show on the Royal Mile, performing or having a well earnt post-performance beer, the last thing on your mind is probably tweeting, updating your Facebook or even (heaven forbid) posting a blog.
Who has time for any of that?
Well…
You do.
Edinburgh Fringe creates a lot of its own buzz – people are excited to be there, they’re excited to see new shows and they’re wandering around looking for something new. Even those not at the Fringe will be following what’s going on, whether that’s through something like the BBC or through the Instagram and Facebook posts of their mates who are there.
So this is no time for a social media blackout!
You don’t want to be the person that misses a great reviewer because they’ve tweeted something about having a free slot and you’ve missed it, do you?
No.
So listen up.
If anything, you need to be more active than usual. Remember, social media is a key tool in your arsenal for promotion. And that means:
Now we’re not saying every second of your spare time needs to be spent on Twitter or Facebook. Here are some things you can do:
1. Set up some rules on IFTTT – such as “whenever someone mentions you in a Tweet, send them a thank you as a reply”
2. Schedule some Tweets/Facebook posts using Buffer so that you’re never silent (more on how to do this here)
3. Schedule a blog post to drop in the middle of the Fringe, and then go in and add some news images just before it posts. You might want to write something like “Having an awesome time” or “best night ever so far at the Fringe,” or even “Funniest moments of my Fringe so far” – you’re scheduling it, so you’re going to need to get *cough* creative *cough* with the content, but reason images will add authenticity. You can change this where it says ‘Publish Immediately’ on WordPress, click the arrow and select ‘Schedule’.
All of these things will help you be active on Twitter, Facebook or your blog during what’s going to be a very, very busy month!
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
Some of you may have already seen the little adverts popping up in between pictures of your friends on Facebook messenger.
Facebook messenger advertising has been around for a while, although dropping them in the middle of conversations is relatively new. Here’s what you need to know:
Adverts in Facebook messenger look nearly the same as the advertisements on the home page. They will have your page name, a short headline, an image, and then a button for people to click. That can take them straight through to ticket sales, album downloads, your website – whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.
Source: Facebook.com
Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com
You can send your advert to anyone that’s interacted with your page before with a personal message, or a series of them. So let’s say for example they’ve watched your videos, followed your page, and now you want to get them to come to your show. You can set up a Facebook Ads campaign that lands straight into the messenger inbox, telling them all about your awesome act.
What’s more, the number of people who click through from messenger is massively bigger than your typical home-page ads.
Photo by Burst on Pexels.com
The normal Facebook advertisements allow you to narrow down your audience. You don’t want to shout out to 12 year olds and 60 year olds when you know your shows are best for 18-35.
You can also set it up based on location. That means you can target people local in London for your London shows, Dublin for your Dublin shows, and so on.
It gaves you way more freedom than traditional Facebook ads.
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com
Messenger is a taking app, right? And what better way to get to know your audience than by talking to them. When you pop an add into messenger, people are more likely to get talking to you. That’s great if you want to build your audience’s loyalty, or simply get them chatting. Because when they’re chatting to you, chances are they’re also chatting to their friends about you.
And we all know how powerful word of mouth advertising is!
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Facebook advertising is daunting if you’ve never done it before. It feels like a million steps and you’re never quite sure whether you’ve chosen the right settings, or whether you’re taking a stab in the dark.
Facebook seems to realise this, too. Which is why they’ve got a bunch of free courses that you can take before you embark on any new advertising.
Super helpful if this is your first time using Facebook ads.
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
Facebook is cracking down on unengaging, unloved Facebook Pages.
For some of the larger Pages, the update won’t negatively impact their reach, because their posts are already performing well enough to tick Facebook’s box of “encouraging meaningful discussions.”
But what about if you have a Page that performs averagely? Your fans, your customers, your clients like and comment and share, but not all the time.
How do you re-work your strategy and make sure your Page is still showing up in your fan’s News Feed?
Well, we’ve done the hard work for you. Here are 10 sure-fire ways to boost your Facebook Page engagement, and keep it that way, which will help you climb back up to the surface of the ocean that is the News Feed.
Facebook Live videos, on average, generate over 6 times the engagement levels than normal videos do. Wow right?!
Not only this, but people spend a lot more time watching Live videos than they do watching your standard, embedded videos.
For viewers watching from desktop computers, average viewing time for a Facebook Live video was a whopping 34.5 minutes (!) compared to standard video, which was just 2.6 minutes.
Not only this, but your Live video will still generate engagement even after it has ended. Over 40% of the engagement, to be exact.
So if you haven’t already: start making Facebook Live videos part of your Page’s strategy.
We know that scheduling can take the ‘social’ out of social media, but if done right it can really aid your social media stats and your engagement.
That’s because scheduling your content can help you drop it into your audience right when they’re all bored and looking for something to occupy their thumb for five minutes.
Posting at your ‘peak times’ will mean your posts are more likely to get the likes, shares, comments and reactions you deserve.
To figure out which time works best for you, you should consult Facebook’s Page Insights to track and analyze your engagement data.
Ah, organic engagement. Such a long way of saying: people seeing your stuff without you having to pay for it.
That’s what makes it great!
But! Pages miss a trick when they don’t piggyback on their own awesomeness and boost their high-performing organic posts.
Boosting them gives them a chance to reach an audience wider than those who already like your page, meaning more thumbs ups, more comments and more shares.
You don’t have to spend a fortune, either. Facebook can boost a post for as little as a tenner, which isn’t much in the grand scheme of the return on the investment that you’ll get.
Curated posts are posts by other people that you’re re-sharing with your audience. They could be videos, photos, gifs or anything in between.
In Buffer’s 2017 round-up, four of their five top performing posts were curated content, meaning they got nearly four-fifths of their top engagement by simply sharing the good work of others!
Of course this doesn’t mean you should hit ‘share’ on every hilarious cat video that finds its way into your personal feed.
You need to make sure the content is relevant for your audience and fit for your brand.
If it ticks those two boxes: fire away!
Your content needs to be the kind of stuff that your fans see and want to tout around.
In Hootsuite’s Content Marketing 101 Guide, they recommend you follow these five steps in ensuring your content is awesome, and I have to say, they cover off all the boxes:
Now, just make sure you’re not making these 5 Mistakes and your brand new facebook plan is ready to go!
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
Facebook announced 7 days ago what we’ve all been expecting for a long time: that Pages will be shown less to their users in the News Feed and instead their friends and family will be prioritized.
Adam Mosseri, who is Head of News Feed at Facebook, said:
With this update, we will prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.
We will also prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with our News Feed values.
If you’re one of the many Freelancers or independent businesses that benefit from referral traffic or even sales through your Facebook Page, then you need to pay attention.
The answer to this is: probably.
Facebook has claimed it’ll only negatively effect pages that don’t consistently post content that their followers want to engage with. They’ve said:
Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.
If you’re one of the pages that consistently drives good reach – which means getting lots of tags or comments from your users, then the update won’t cause you so much of a problem.
If however you are like most independent business and your engagement is hit and miss, you may want to start working on your content to get the best engagement out of it. Check back soon for a post on this.
Pages will be prioritised based on how many posts ‘generate a conversation’.
This could be anything from friends debating in your comments to people tagging each other in them.
Facebook wants to be seen as a place that “brings people closer together and build relationships” and they’ve put that at the heart of their News Feed update.
The algorithm will change to prioritise the types of posts people typically interact with. So if you have a core set of die-hard, loyal fans who comment on everything you do, chances are high they’ll continue to do so.
Also, people who’ve selected ‘See First’ for your page will continue to see your Page’s posts at the top of their News Feed.
If you don’t know what this is, it’s a handy feature Facebook added so people can keep track of their favourite Pages by having their posts always stuck to the top of their News Feed.
Facebook has categorically said it will demote any content that’s deemed as:
“engagement-bait” to goad people into commenting on posts
This is because Facebook doesn’t think these types of posts constitute a “meaningful interaction.”
The best way, it seems, to make sure your Page stats don’t suffer too badly is by making sure your Page is ticking those crucial Facebook boxes.
These are:
Facebook has a good tip in their press release as well: Live videos often get six times as many interactions as regular videos.
Facebook suggests that Pages that post more Live videos will tend to be the Pages getting more engagement, and therefore the Pages more likely to keep their spots in their customer’s News Feeds.
Check back for our next post on how to give your Facebook Page an engagement check-up and stop the negative effects of the update.
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
If you’ve been to a social media conference in the last three years, chances are you’ve heard someone stand up on the podium and pronounce that Twitter is dead, dying or already done.
They point to the perceived limitations of the channel to support their arguments.
Only 140 characters!
Millions of tweets per minute – and your important brand message getting lost in all the noise!
The figures, however, paint a different picture.
Since its launch in 2010 Twitter has experienced steady growth from 30 million active users up to 328 million – an increase of nearly 300 million across just 7 years. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire population of the USA signing up to tell us their thoughts in just 140 characters. Pretty impressive, no?
This year, however, is the first year since 2015 that Twitter has seen a plateau in their number of active monthly users – a steady 328 million.
Is this finally proof that Twitter is on the way out?
Probably not.
After all, even their dip in 2015 was countered by a +5million influx of users in the following quarter.
So why are we all still asking this question?
(Who uses Twitter, I mean – not ‘who used to present the crystal maze’)
My theory is this: the people asking whether Twitter is dying is the proportion of the population not using Twitter. They’ve come late to the party, seen the snack table was missing cheesy puffs and walked straight back out of the door. What do you mean I can’t compose a small essay on my thoughts about my neighbour’s dog? Twitter’s not for me!
In actual fact, 100 million people are active on Twitter every single day. They send 500 million tweets and account for 45% of all internet users.
In the UK alone there are 13million Twitter users – that’s 20% of the total population.
Not only this, but chances are the people using Twitter are your target demographic: 37% of total Twitter users are between 18 and 29, and 25% are between 30-49.
Now add into this the fact that Twitter reported share growth of 12% in April, and 2017 saw it’s biggest jump in terms of new users since ’15… I think it’s probably time to stop telling people Twitter is dead.
Twitter is very much alive and kickin’.
Happy Tweeting, guys.
Sources:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/
https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/
Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.
Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com
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