Digital Marketing Archives -

When it comes to your Digital Marketing education, it is always important to find the right place to learn the basics (these definitely would be something to invest in), then add to that knowledge through practice and reading. If you fall out of the rhythm though, there is definitely ways to remind yourself of some things and, along the way, to update your knowledge.

These are all to support or explain some things that you may not understand, but at the end of the day, digital marketing is a practical subject. If you don’t do it, you don’t know it.

So get reading, do some of the courses and then dive in and be brave to learn on the job way more than what you can from any other place (and check out some of the links below so you can sign up for the best resources!👇 )

Here is all the links to the different learning platforms. Have fun!

Google Analytics Academy

Hubspot Academy

As an added, here are two paying courses to do in Ireland (if you want to invest to get more grasp on the topics):

Irish Times Training: https://www.irishtimestraining.com/course-list?subject=9

UCD: https://www.ucd.ie/professionalacademy/findyourcourse/professionaldiplomaindigitalmarketing/

LEO Digital Marketing Course: https://www.localenterprise.ie/DLR/Training-Events/Online%20Marketing%20and%20Social%20Media/

Kinsta – WP Engine – WP Rocket – Social Media Today – Social Media Examiner – Yoast SEO – Buffer – PPC Hero – WP Beginner – Moz

Blogs worth seeking extra info on:

Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/blog/?cat=8

Neil Patel: https://neilpatel.com/

May we all have satisfying conversations,

Szabina

Creating a social media presence is fairly easy, the maintenance and the growth are where the problems lie. Some businesses fall into a vicious circle of the ‘similar content’ machine, which is to say that they got into a habit from years ago that might not at all be relevant today. Others may be taking advice from just the wrong source (not necessarily their own fault) and they don’t know how to turn things around once the numbers don’t rocket as they once did. They become heavily reliant on paid boosting or ads, which could be avoided or at least balanced in a healthier way. I’m bringing 5 tips to your attention today to improve your social media presence. Let’s have a look! 👀

1. Utilise social stories

Most would know that social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest have a stories section. What’s a lesser-known fact is that Twitter (Fleet – will be gone early August) and LinkedIn (Stories) have the same now, so when you’re a business, you should definitely utilise it as part of your social media strategy.

As people do like to interact/view the story contents, it will be a natural and organic booster to your posts that will drive engagement up and will also help you reach new audiences for you to work with.

Just don’t forget to use the hashtags in your stories to reach the right audience.

HOT TIP: Include some #s in the text you add to your story, so you’re not restricted to the 1 hashtag sticker.

2. Show off your people

In today’s digital era simply pushing your business goals are just not going to cut it anymore, as you might have heard.

Personalising any business is a bit of a leap for some, but I can assure you, utilising the ‘behind the scenes’ of businesses has been one of the HOT TIPs of 2021 (check out this article to learn more –> How to increase sales by personalising your website).

Showing off the faces behind your business does pay off, drives engagement and a bit of sass, will gain you followers!

Have the 30/70 rule. 30% of your content should be more strictly brand-related content, while the rest of the 70% is where you can have fun, e.g. repost/retweet to help out your business partners, promote your employees, or even add some jokes, or anything else you’d like to build trust, add personality to your business and ensure that your customers recognise that there are real people behind the brand you established.

NOTE: I know there is controversy around this rule, but when applied, the ratio mentioned above will give the best results.

3. Go Live

With your social media presence, it is important to navigate the algorithms that the different platforms throw at you as best you possibly can.

Going live will be prioritised by the social media platforms’ algorithms because they want video as a leading content source – everyone is visual and videos generally do great. This will mean that your business will get a really high organic reach that it otherwise couldn’t. For e.g.: Facebook has been restricting organic reach for years now, and this is a great way around it!

As part of the personalisation of your business, it is good practice to go live. You can update your customers about something exciting happening in your business or inform them of events that are important to you and your company!

4. Don’t restrict your social links

I see this less and less, but it’s still relevant. We must catch up on how to include relevant links – especially on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You should not have just one link in your bio. Or rather, have the link that will link your customers/audiences to your other relevant links.

Linktr.ee or Campsite.bio (or more HERE) will link up your accounts together, the pages you’d like your audience to visit often (e.g. for regular updates), that special offer you’d like to bring to their attention, or the tickets you’d like them to get, etc.

It’s an easy sign up (mostly free, unless you want fancy fonts and backgrounds), and I know first-hand that Linktree is continuously developing.

Just don’t forget to update your list on a regular basis and you’re golden.

Hot Tip: Include it on ALL your channels. It is developed for that purpose and that way one link works everywhere and nothing will get forgotten!

5. Mind your hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to direct your content to the right audience.

General rule of thumb with hashtags:

Aim for relevant keywords for hashtags (no generalisations, if possible) as they should aid audience retention. We want to reach the right audiences and gain more!
Research your hashtags and go for the ones that have already a 1000-10K reach. Anything below or above is most likely overly generalised or overused.
When there is no space for too many hashtags, aim to use relevant ones over business related ones, as that will attract new audiences (e.g. Twitter), UNLESS there are business event/occasion/season/mood or business personalisation related business hashtags that has good prior track record (e.g. over 1000 reach already)

Instagram:

We should aim for 30-35 hashtags with each post
Up to 15 should be a constant that is used for your brand every time.
The rest you’ll have to work on, to know where we need to research and come up with in relation to each post

Twitter:

MAX 3 hashtags to be used – 2 is usually better.
As there is a character restriction of 280 (including link and hashtags), go for only 2 hashtags unless there is something else that is relevant and is trending.

LinkedIn:

Up to 20 hashtags should be used
Most of these can be repurposed from Instagram, as there are a lot of overlaps.

Tiktok:

Limited to 100 characters, so aim to work on a good a good low number here – 1-2 should suffice, depending on the length of your copy.

Facebook:

No hashtags should be used as they don’t work the same way as everywhere else.

For further info on #s see this article from the creators of Hootsuite. Just forget what they’re saying about Facebook, as I mentioned above, they shouldn’t be used, they don’t add to the organic reach like they do on the other platforms.

Here are some links where you can read up on more on this topic:

On Live streaming: https://neilpatel.com/blog/live-streaming/

Find Your Hashtag Strategy: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/hashtag-analytics/

Utilise User Generated Content: https://wpengine.com/resources/user-generated-content-strategy-wordpress/

Until next time,

May we all have satisfying conversations!

Szabina 👌