Published on Thursday, June 8th, 2017 under Email Marketing, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Marketing

There’s a problem with social media

The problem is ownership.

You might have 5213 likes on Facebook, but let’s be honest, you don’t own them, because Facebook does. And they can whisk them away at any moment, or charge you more to reach them.

And that’s why you need to know which channels you own, and which you rent.

You own your website. It’s a tool to generate sales, enquiries and collect email addresses amongst other things. That’s why it’s the core of your digital marketing effort.

You own your email database. You’ve built it. It’s yours to use respectfully, and it’s one of the best ways to remind people you exist without having to spend money.

But when it comes to Facebook, Instagram or Linkedin, you’re renting.

Yes, renting does have benefits. Like exposure to an audience you couldn’t have gathered yourself.

But you shouldn’t build your house on rented land. Because the landlord might kick you out or put the rent up.

Build on the land you own first. Your website. Your emails. Then leverage your rentals to get the word out. That’s the right order.

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Published on Thursday, April 7th, 2016 under Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Marketing, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter

Is your business suffering from social media fatigue?

You know what the problem is with social media?

The problem is it’s always on – so when your business decides to do Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or whatever social media network is the latest thing – you commit to spending a whole lot of time.

And time is money. (just to point out the obvious)

Anyway, the question is – how do you avoid social media fatigue, and spend your time and energy in the right areas?

I don’t know that I can answer that completely here, but I do have a single tip to share – choose one platform.

Why you should choose one social media network.

Sure, big corporates might have social media media managers that can be across everything – but unless you’re a big corporate, chances are you won’t have the resources to do everything, or at least everything well… Read More

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Published on Thursday, March 31st, 2016 under Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Marketing, Pinterest, Twitter

Why your social media images should be landscape(d)

You know what the problem is with social media?

It’s that every different social media network requires different sized images.

It’s incredibly annoying – or at least it was… until today.

Because today I’ve discovered a free tool that takes the hassle out of getting the right sized image for each social media platform – hooray!

It’s called landscape – and here’s how it works:

Go to sproutsocial.com/landscape
Upload any image you’d like to use on social media
Choose the social media network(s) you’re interested in
Download your new images – that’s it!

Forget photoshop – use landscape.

Here’s an example of how Landscape works (using the photo below)

First, upload your image to sproutsocial.com/landscape...

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Published on Thursday, March 17th, 2016 under Instagram, Marketing

Is your business cool enough for Instagram?

If you’ve been thinking about using Instagram, then today’s article is for you.

Not familiar with Instagram? Learn the basics first.

4 questions to ask before starting your Instagram account:

Do you sell direct to customers? (rather than to other businesses)
Do people get passionate or genuinely excited about your product or service? (be honest!)
Can your product or service be communicated well using photography?
Do you have the resources to produce beautiful, high-quality photography for Instagram? (this is a biggie)

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Published on Friday, March 4th, 2016 under Instagram, Marketing

Instagram and the influence ecomomy

I’ve just started following an AMAZING Instagram account.

It’s called ‘BareKiwi’.

BareKiwi is the brainchild of Kyle Mulinder, who over the last 2 years has been documenting NZ’s beauty by posting stunning photo’s to his Instagram account – grab a coffee and check it out.

As you can see, BareKiwi has approx 28 thousand (!) followers – but the thing that attracted my attention wasn’t the popularity of the account – but rather an event that’s happening soon.

It’s called an InstaMeet.

What’s an InstaMeet?

An InstaMeet is where Instagrammers (from around the globe) get together in real life to meet up with an Instagram user they follow and respect – in this case, BareKiwi.

But here’s the clever part… Read More

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Published on Thursday, February 11th, 2016 under Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Marketing, Pinterest, Twitter

Revealed: What nobody tells you about social media

Hold on to your hats folks…

Because social media isn’t the knight-in-shining armour we all think it is.

Why? Because social media marketing has a fundamental flaw for us as business owners – and that is that we don’t own the audience.

Let me explain.

When your business has a customer’s email address, or their details in your database – you own the relationship with the customer, and all things going well, you have permission to communicate with them.

But when you build a following on Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram – the social media platform owns the customer relationship, and that presents a challenge… Read More

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Published on Friday, December 11th, 2015 under Instagram, Marketing

Your introduction to Instagram advertising

Noticed something different with Instagram?

If you regularly use Instagram, you can’t have missed it. In fact, take a quick scroll through your feed now and you’ll spot it straight away…

That’s right: Instagram now has advertising. And whether you like it or not, Instagram releasing ads was kind of inevitable.

After all, Instagram has 400 million active users who post 3.5 BILLION photos every day – and that’s a massive potential audience for businesses around the globe. And if you weren’t aware – Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion back in 2012, so it had to start earning revenue at some point. (Darn businesses having to earn money – gosh!)

So anyway, besides knowing there’s a HUGE potential audience out there for your business, just what do you need to know about Instagram ads?

Let’s take a look…

What do Instagram ads look like?

Instagram ads look almost like any other Instagram post. The only difference is, they have a blue tag that says “sponsored” and they will come from an account you probably don’t already follow. Make sense?

Here are a couple of ads that popped up in my feed recently:

Instagram ad1 Instagram ad2

The best part about Instagram ads? Links!

In the past, Instagram has famously made it very difficult for people and businesses to include external links to other places on the net. This has been an absolute pain in the backside if you’re a business that’s trying to drive traffic to your website… Read More

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Published on Friday, November 13th, 2015 under Instagram, Marketing

How to build your brand on Instagram: 5 tips from Thanks

Don’t you just love seeing brands kick ass at social marketing?

We’ve noticed that our friends at Thanks store (they’ve got a couple of physical stores and an online shop) have being doing great things with their Instagram account.

They’ve got almost 10,000 followers – and it’s growing rapidly. So we decided to ask them about the secret to their success.

We sat down for a coffee with Sophie (Thanks Instagrammer-in-chief), who gave us a few pointers…

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Published on Friday, October 9th, 2015 under Facebook, Instagram, Marketing

Social Media: Why you should start using Canva for your Facebook images

Want to know one of the best things you can do for your social media?

Use great images.

Yes, we harp on about it any chance we get. Why? Because images are absolutely key to great social media. They’re attention-grabbing, they demand engagement (they’re pretty shareable), and they add context to what you’re trying to say.

But if that Google image search didn’t quite get the results you were after, and you don’t have the luxury of having a graphic designer on staff who can whip up something before their morning coffee, here’s the thing that’s going to change your life: Canva.

What’s Canva?

Canva is a website programme (and now an iPad app) that will help you create beautiful images and designs. Read More

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Published on Friday, May 15th, 2015 under Instagram, Marketing, Twitter

The rise of emoji in digital marketing

I don’t really want to admit to this.

But the other day I found myself envying someone’s use of emoji.

And just in case you’re wondering what on earth I’m talking about, an emoji is a small icon that’s used to express an idea or emotion in digital communication.

Anyway, I’ll say that again: the other day I found myself envying someone’s use of emoji.

It’s as stupid as it sounds. A friend tweeted a four-emoji combo that described exactly how happy she was to have a rainy day off to spend in bed reading.

My response was:

1. Why didn’t I think of using those emojis?
2. I should really start using that graph emoji more often

I shouldn’t really care. It’s not really that important.

But here’s the thing though – it might just be (and here’s why…)

The growth of Emoji use

Somehow in the last couple of years, emoji have taken over digital culture.

Emoji are in the text conversations we have, they’re tacked onto the end of tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram captions, and they’re made into memes. They’re so pervasive that more than half of all Instagram captions contain emoji. They’re getting pretty hard to ignore… Read More

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