Oh, the holidays! Jingles, festivities, gift-giving, and….social media surfing. Yes, you heard it right. Social media buzz continues, if not increases, during the holidays. Consumers may be spending time on last-minute holiday party touches and finishing off gift-wrapping marathons, but what happens in between all this holiday activity? Newsfeed scrolling galore.

Eyeballs are eagerly consuming social media during those awkward family parties or while sitting next to the fire sipping eggnog. For that reason, you’ll want to hold off pausing your social media strategy during this time of the year and instead, keep the posts rolling for maximum engagement. And since most brick and mortar businesses take a holiday break, customers will turn to social timely responses.

Keep in mind these key social media marketing factors when maintaining business communications during the holiday season:

Brand personality:

Your brand’s personality and voice should remain consistent, even during the holidays but that doesn’t mean your business can’t make festive tweaks. Company party? Show off some holiday prep photos or post a short behind-the-scenes video of employee celebrations and gift exchanges. If you get help with your social media, make sure your team has a grasp of your brand’s persona. This will help when dealing with difficult customer interactions.

Important information:

Post information that is relevant to your customers such as, holiday hours, giveaways, discounts, and events. It’s most likely your audience will visit your social media pages for quick access to information, especially for industries such as restaurant, retail, and e-commerce, so make sure all those details are up-to-date.

Engagement posts:

Entertain your audience with unique holiday posts. Create a holiday hashtag related to your area of businesses and encourage customers to converse with you about their holiday traditions. Pictures and videos are a great way to grab attention and easy to re-post. And the gift-giving season wouldn’t be complete without a giveaway, so post an original contest that showcases your best products, as well as thanks to your fans.

Timely responses:

Quick, accurate responses will put you at the forefront of social media. If your customers fail to reach you through your website, chances are social media will be their next stop. You don’t want to waste your customers’ valuable time, so answer their inquiries as soon as possible. The same goes for comments received on posts, reviews, wall posts, etc.; make sure to respond and spread the holiday cheer!

Looking to jump-start your social media presence during the holidays or anticipating an onslaught of customer service requests? Put us on your wish list.

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Money can’t buy happiness, unless you find your happiness in marketing strategy unrestricted by budget. If that’s the case, you’re in quite the pickle. Luckily, a low budget doesn’t have to mean your business has to sit on the social media marketing sidelines. It only requires an even greater emphasis on organization and good ol’ fashioned ingenuity.

Here at CDG, we’ve worked with a variety of clients bound by all types of budgets, large and small. After narrowing in on goals and brand persona, it’s our job to allocate funds intelligently and ensure dollars are spent in the most effective way possible. Be savvy with your spend on social and your competitors won’t leave your business in the dust.

Find Your Focus

You’ve gotta get smart about spend when a small budget keeps that wallet closed tight. And getting smart means focusing in on the platforms most worth your while. Pinterest is there, people are pinning, but that doesn’t mean your restaurant needs to start up its own page ASAP. Get involved at first on the networks that make immediate sense based on audience and industry. After all, when pleading your case for increased budget, having a great start on one platform to back you up is a whole heck of a lot better than having an underwhelming start on three platforms.

Focus comes into play with regards to your business’ overall goals as well. Do you want to build a community? Increase brand awareness? Drive people to your website for sales? Your primary desired outcome needs to be the driving force behind the time and money invested in social, just as it would need to be for any other method of marketing.

Stock Your Toolbox

The minute social media began to prove itself beneficial for marketers, people began creating tools to automate and make process “easy”. With the amount of change that takes place in both the world of social networking and the world of shortened attention spans, launching your business into marketing through these channels is anything but easy. BUT, there are useful tools amidst all the clutter that can free up time (aka money) spent and allow for more emphasis on actual strategy. Here are a handful that have caught our eye, both past and present:

• Hootsuite – One of the biggest players in social media management platforms for a reason, the interface is simple to set up, use, and change as needed. Use it to monitor pages and schedule posts – it integrates nicely alongside a variety of social networks, although we find it tends to work the best with Twitter. They offer a FREE plan, as well as other robust options at reasonable pricing.
• Agorapulse – Agorapulse is another social media management tool that allows for monitoring, scheduling and analysis, with options for running promotions and competitor analysis as well. Plans start at $29/month ($19/month when billed annually) for the management of one brand across multiple channels. They also offer free tools/resources for Facebook here.
• Onlypult – Most management tools have started offering scheduling for Instagram but the struggle is real. It’s difficult to find one you can truly set and forget. Enter Onlypult. Upload and schedule Instagram posts and track analytics starting at $12/month. Just be sure to select the right timezone when scheduling. Fun fact: 4PM CST is 1AM in Moscow.
• Archie – Outreach is key to growing a following, especially on a platform like Instagram. If you don’t have the manpower to put towards it, test out some automation. Archie seeks out images on Instagram based on desired keywords/hashtags and interacts with them via “likes”. Plans start at $9/month but consider going with $19/month for the Explicit Content Filter functionality. Leave a robot to do all the work without boundaries and you might just get followers you’d rather not have.
• Autopin – From the minds of Archie, Autopin functions along the same lines but on Pinterest. Cost comes in at $9/month.
• Canva – FREE is always music to the ears. Create graphics for all kinds of posts across multiple networks. They provide a number of pre-made layouts to use as is or alter, as well as premium options starting at .99 a piece. Upload your own images for added customization, or start from scratch with intuitive functionality that’ll take your graphics to the next level.

Be Realistic

If you’re going at all of this solo, cut yourself some slack and realize results on social aren’t always overnight. Even with a team at your disposal, seeing immediate growth, sales, engagement, etc. takes time. And when your budget is minuscule, the odds are stacked against you right off the bat.

Learn how to make the most of what you have to work with, get in with the right tools, and maintain that focus so that the minute a little extra change is thrown your way, your business can appreciate it enough to make things happen. Or, even better, hire the right PEOPLE to make things happen. Hint…hint.

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Your brand has a social media presence with followers flocking to interact in staggering numbers. And the more people paying attention to your content, the more people there are to please. How do you build off this momentum and form/maintain a virtual community based on trust and loyalty?

Pro Tip: Treat your social interactions as if they were potential customers talking to you face-to-face. How would you act? What would you say? We know it’s difficult to maintain your composure when you’re responding to a bad review or criticism when sitting in front of your computer. Conversely, we can easily take positive feedback and compliments for granted when we’re online. This little trick will help you to stay in better “business form” when communicating with your fan base. Here are some keys to our communication policies for our clients.

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Be truthful. The viral nature of posts when they hit the social streams requires brands to be extra conscious of how they portray themselves. If your company makes a mistake, admit fault. Don’t hide or sugarcoat because backlash from an audience is always much easier to come by than praise. Answer questions honestly and avoid deleting posts from customers with criticisms or negative reviews.  If you lie, someone will find out.  It’s the internet.

Encourage open communication. Your customers provide some of the best insight into what works and doesn’t work with regards to your product/brand, and social media has become the perfect platform for these feelings to be revealed. Use negative feedback as a springboard for developing loyalty. Openly building a conversation off of one individual’s negative experience demonstrates a desire to continually improve and serve your customers as best as possible. Social media is the perfect place to turn failures into successes.

Provide resources. Social media demonstrates an immediacy that makes it the perfect place (or if ignored, worst) for followers to turn to and ask questions. Use your social platforms to provide additional information on your business and further direct people into the areas of your website that may frequently be ignored. Provide quick answers and explanations and you add value to your virtual community.

You don’t have to give every detail of every move and decision away to show social followers that you’re trustworthy. Just recognize the value of open and honest conversations and the rest will fall into place. Be real and be open because when your brand shows its human side, that’s when followers turn into fans. And when all else fails, turn to the CDG team for all the heavy lifting.

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Instagram introduced video about a year ago, and yet few brands have taken advantage of it. Instagram is still considered the wild, wild, west of social media marketing, and for that reason brands have not yet had the courage to attack the beast that is Instagram.  In fact, a mere 4% of the US Fortune 500 brands are using Instagram video.  This means that there is an even playing field for small and mid-sized businesses to get in the game- although some brands out there that are already killing it. How can your business become a behemoth on the Instagram scene?

Instagram has over 200 million active users, most of them characterized as millenials.  The simplicity of the app is what makes it so popular.  The video function is no different.  With 13 filter options, you can edit and cut frames of your video to the appropriate length and then add a unique filter as a finishing touch.  At 15 seconds, there is plenty of time to get a message across for your brand.   Don’t have any earth shattering ideas? A simple concept is almost always the most effective:

• Promote a new product or service: Customers always enjoy feeling like they have V.I.P access to a brand, so why not post a video about your newest inventory for all your Instagram followers before it gets put on the shelf.  Same goes for restaurants with a new menu item or a boutique with a pair of boots back in stock—giving your fans a heads up goes a long way with them.

• Behind-the-scenes:  Giving a vision of what exactly goes on at your business helps your customers feel like they’re part of your brand.  Try doing a short clip of what happens before your store opens, a tour of your office space, or a snapshot of how your product is created.

• Employee introductions:  Your customers like to know who is working for your brand and who they might meet if they stop in! Do quirky 5-second each interviews asking them what they’re favorite part of working at your business is, or go totally shocking and ask about their favorite condiment.  Have fun with it, and your followers will too.

• Run a promotion: Create a cool brand video and then announce if it gets 500 likes, those who come into the business and reference the Instagram video get 5% off; 1,000 likes gets 10% off, etc., etc. This will give your small business engagement as well as extended reach to possible new customers, all while treating your current followers to a small discount.

So is your head swirling with ideas? Remember, this doesn’t have to be a masterpiece in videography—just a thoughtful, branded video that speaks to your audience.  Don’t forget to include a terrific hashtag to tout to your followers.  There is no golden number of hashtags, but more than two can be overwhelming for your followers.  What are you waiting for? Arm the forces to make social media gold!

Are there any video strategies you’re already using on Instagram?

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So you finally did it: You joined Instagram! You’ve been hearing all about how rapidly Instagram is growing, how engaged its user base is, and all the benefits it can provide for a small business, and you finally decided to create a brand account for your company. So now you just post photos, right? Wellll, yes … but there’s a lot more to it than that. Before you get all ‘Gram happy, there are a few important guidelines to learn and follow to make sure your brand page doesn’t crash and burn like an airplane swatted out of the sky by King Kong’s hefty mitt. Here are some common mistakes brands make on Instagram that you can learn from.

Inauthentic Images

People are using Instagram to connect with friends and people they find interesting or inspiring, not brands. So if you’re going to make an impact on Instagram or get anyone to interact with you, you’re going to have to “keep it real.” Michael Kors was one of the first brands to test Instagram ads back in November, and they received overwhelming backlash from users for images that were seen as “too polished,”according to The Verge. (To be fair, this ad also received a staggering number of “likes” and earned the Michael Kors account almost 34,000 new followers…but Michael Kors is also not a small to mid-sized business.) Posting photos that have an authentic, user-generated feel will help your brand seem like a real person and not just a company trying to sell something, someone that your customers will want to engage with—a friend.

Inconsistent Posting

We see it all too often. A brand enthusiastically jumps onto the Instagram bandwagon, visions of “likes” and followers dancing in their heads, posts periodically for a few weeks…and eventually gets caught up in other things and lets the account go dark. Inconsistent posting kills an account (apologies for all the ominous imagery). If you’re not in your fans’ feeds, they’re going to forget about you, and if they’re searching for your account and see that you haven’t posted in seven months, they’re not going to bother to press that little “Follow” button. Establishing a consistent posting schedule, say 3–5 times a week, is key in maintaining a valuable, relevant, and follow-able Instagram presence.

Not Engaging with Fans

This hearkens back to the first point, but if you’re not using Instagram like a real, live human, your fans aren’t going to want to follow you. No one likes talking to a brick wall. If your followers are talking to you, talk back! Answer questions, respond to comments, in short—engage. Maintaining an active and interactive Instagram presence will help you to build relationships and a sense of trust with your followers, and the more your followers trust you, the more they’ll want to give you their business. Think about it; who would you rather give your business to, a real person who is going to give you personal care and attention, or a faceless, mute marketing machine?

Overusing Hash Tags

Kind of a no-brainer. A thoughtful, strategically placed hash tag here and there provides value and helps your brand get found, #but #no #one #likes #to #see #this #in #their #feed. #NorIsThisHelpingAnyoneOrGainingYouAnyFriends. Enough said.

Repeating and Repurposing Content

If your fans are truly your fans, there’s a good chance they follow you on multiple platforms. So if you think, “Hey, no one will notice if I post the photo I just uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ today on Instagram too,” take it from us—they are watching you, and THEY KNOW. It’s okay to repeat some content across platforms, sure, but if you’re not creating some unique posts and content for each channel, your fans will have no reason to follow each of your accounts, thus limiting your reach. The same goes for repurposing content. We know you paid a pretty penny for those press photos and you want to get the most out of them, but as we mentioned above, Instagram is about authentic, user-generated-type images, so filling your feed with the same shiny, ultra-poised PR pictures you posted on your website, in your e-newsletter, and on your ad materials isn’t going to earn you any street cred.

Not Providing Value

Along the same lines and to reiterate, it’s important to provide value to your followers—give them a reason to follow you! Again, if you’re just going to fill your fans’ feeds with ads, branding efforts, and marketing messages, you’re not giving them any reason to stick around—and they won’t. Provide value by posting exclusive content they can’t see anywhere else. Behind-the-scenes shots, sneak peeks, “day in the life” type photos—these not only provide that sense of authenticity we already discussed (i.e., make you seem like a real person and not a corporate robot), but they make your account valuable and worth following.

The important thing is to ask yourself: Would you follow your brand’s Instagram account? If you’re not sure, then you’re probably leaving something to be desired by your followers (or lack thereof, as the case may be…). Keeping some of these crucial “dos and don’ts” in mind will help whip your account into shape and hopefully gain you some new fans—and eventually customers. Of course, keeping all these things in mind while running both a social media marketing campaign and your business can be a bit much to handle, so if you need a hand, you know who to call........

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