Twitter Analytic Tips for 2023

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Twitter is a social media app that helps people stay up to date with current events happening across the world in real-time. This app is unique because of the way it encourages conversation and engagement. For many brands, Twitter can be a great marketing tool when used the right way.

If you’re looking to drive engagement with organic and paid posts, its essential to have an understanding of Twitter analytics.

Here are some tips to help you boost engagement and brand awareness.

Know Your Followers

Knowing your audience is the key to creating content that resonates with them.

Knowing their social media demographics (gender, age, language, income and location) is just the beginning. You also want to know what they like – what kind of content they engage with, what kind of language they use when they talk about it, etc.

You can find out all this information on your Twitter dashboard. You can also target your audience based on their preferred device, behavior and interests. You can even find followers of similar accounts who may be interested in following you!

What Tweets Are Working?

When you’re running a business, it’s important to have an understanding of what your audience likes. Engagements on Twitter include follows, retweets, favorites, replies, URL clicks, media views, hashtag clicks, and mention clicks. You’ll find impressions, engagements, and engagement rates on the Tweets tab. If you keep an eye on which tweets are achieving the most engagements over time (and which are not), you’ll be able to target your content accordingly and develop a closer connection with your followers.

Knowing When to Tweet

When it comes to Twitter, the best time to post varies from person to person. We’ve found that different days and times get more engagement than others, so it’s important to try a variety of posting days and times to see what drives engagement for you.

We’ve put together some general guidelines for the best times to post on Twitter, but keep in mind that geographic data can also inform the optimal time to tweet specific content. Twitter can analyze your data and suggest the optimal time to tweet for maximum engagement.

However, don’t let this information dictate your frequency! It’s still a good idea to post at least once a day and keep the volume of tweets more or less steady so your audience can become accustomed to the frequency of your posts.

Measure Your Performance

As you can see, Twitter advertising is a great way to get your message out to a large audience.

But what if you want to compare your Twitter ads against your regular posts?

You can do that by going to the top right of the Tweets tab and clicking on ‘promoted’. This will show you how your paid posts did from an impression and engagement point of view. Note that this data is not kept forever so be sure to download your data if you want to keep a longer-term performance record.

Final Thoughts

No matter how great your Twitter feed, there’s always room for improvement. By using our Twitter analytics tips regularly, you’ll soon see what strategies work best and which ones can be dropped.

At Onimod Global, we have extensive experience in all things social media. Our team knows how to write engaging copy that will get people talking—and we know how to create visuals that will get them clicking.

If you’re looking to revamp your social media efforts for 2023, give us a call or contact us today.

How To Effectively Use Hashtags on Social Media

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Promoting your brand on Social Media is paramount nowadays. And hashtags are an extremely effective tool when used correctly. Let’s delve a little deeper into the world of the previous pound sign (#) and how it can captivate audiences in 2022.

Hashtags can be one of the best way to make your content available in other realms of the social media world. The history of hashtags and their origin stem from Twitter and slowly began to grow across the board on other social media outlets.

Here’s a look at how to properly use hashtags to help people find your topics and expand your audience.

What are Hashtags?

By definition a hashtag is a keyword phrase or word preceded by a hash symbol (#). It’s used all over social media nowadays within the body of a post. The purpose of the hashtag is to bring attention to your posts in order to create interaction with new potential followers. When using a phrase as a hashtag, you spell it without spaces i.g. #onimodglobal.

Hashtags can include numbers but it cannot use symbols or punctuations. Beginning middle, or end you can place a hashtag in the body of your social media post or within the comment section. When you utilize this strategy it can help people who don’t follow you to find your content.

Why are Hashtags Important?

Hashtags are important for the sole purpose of your content being found by the right people. By using hashtags that are relevant to your business or the services you provide it can help drive your content to the right people. When this happens, you will have traffic to your content that will in turn boost your views, likes, and shares.

However, using them only makes a difference in your social media strategy when it’s done the right way. Here are some hashtag tips:

  1. Don’t get carried away with hashtags – The number of hashtags you can use depends on which platform you are using. Twitter would be a great example where one to three hashtags will have more of an impact opposed to using lot of them.
  2. Keep hashtags short and memorable – It’s in best hashtag practice that you don’t use a lot of words within a tag. A great example of this would be hashtag activism campaigns. The summer of 2020 was huge for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in America, and is still widely used within social media today.
  3. Don’t choose hashtags that are too obscure – If you choose a tag that no one is going to search for, it won’t benefit your marketing efforts.

Create your Own Hashtag Strategy

Anyone can create their own hashtag strategy. While there are many ways you can go about this, the best way is to choose specific hashtags whenever possible. The more specific you can get, the more likely you are to attract a targeted audience. Another strategy is using capital letters at the front of each word. This clarifies what you are trying to communicate.

Your competition is more than likely already using hashtags within their social media strategy. How successful are they at engaging your mutual audience? Pay attention to how much or how little they use hashtags and what the response is.

A successful hashtag strategy starts with knowing your audience and taking the time to become familiar with what works on each platform. With that knowledge in hand, you will continue to learn what works and what doesn’t, by using hashtags as part of your social media strategy and analyzing your results.

Overall, hashtags are a great tool for communicating with your followers as well as increasing engagement and attracting new customers.

Last Thoughts

Whether you’re new to social media or have been around it for a while, you can greatly benefit from learning a trick or two about hashtags. From Facebook to Instagram and Twitter, you will understand how to drive engagement and extend reach.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. If you’re looking for assistance with your content marketing or any other areas of digital marketing, contact us today!

How To Increase Your Online Visibility Through Social Media

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Social media plays a vital role in today’s society. It can help you generate buzz around your products and your brand by having users share your content. But social networks are incredibly busy and filled with stimuli. With so much going on, how do you make sure that users will find your content throughout all this mess? Read on to find out more…

Social media is a great resource when it comes to increasing your online visibility. There are so many ways that an organization’s pages can be optimized in order to do so.

We’ll take a look at how you can bring a couple of strategies together to generate more searches for your business—and from this, achieve a greater online presence.

Does Social Media Posting Help With Online Visibility?

While social media cannot directly impact your rankings, you can create a more holistic approach to online marketing. However, social media activity can raise your company’s profile and increase the clicks on their website. What are you aiming to achieve by linking social media activity with online visibility? Here’s a couple things you can do to get started:

  • Getting clicks on your organization’s website
  • Having an increase in online searches for the company
  • Social shares for a wider post reach and increased audience
  • Sharing information to help analyze social engagement

All of the things above have one thing in common and that is that they all increase the possibilities for lead opportunities. The way you can achieve lead opportunities above is by having and creating quality content. Often times quality content gets overlooked, its truly one of the best ways you can leverage and boost your online presence.

Which Social Media Platforms Are the Best for SEO?

Which platforms do you currently use? Most social media platforms can help with online visibility. A lot of people have that mindset, but you should honestly be thinking about  using the platforms that will help you reach your target audience. Each social media platform works slightly differently when it comes to encouraging clicks and shares.

It goes without saying most brands have a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Google My Business accounts. But many businesses also utilize Youtube, Tiktok and Pinterest. But which performs best? Facebook continues to be powerful all over the world. With more than 1.71 billion monthly users, the social media platform is ripe for SEO. Be attentive with your company page and find and nourish your best promoters on the platform. Facebook is a great lead generator, so always stay on brand and use targeted keywords in your posts. Make sure to cross-post videos you produce and publish on your YouTube account as well.

Although Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, they perform differently for different organizations’ offerings.

Also, any social platform a company uses has to be “on brand” for them, otherwise it will defeat the purpose of boosting your SEO. At the end of the day, a great website should have all the key elements of an effective inbound marketing strategy:

  • An active blog.
  • Responsive design.
  • Intuitive navigation.
  • Effective conversion strategy with calls to action.

What Are the Best Ways to Optimize Social Media for Better Online Visibility?

How can you make the most of your brand’s social media platforms? Here are a couple of techniques that you can use to improve your websites online visibility. 

LinkedIn & Facebook

Most people breeze by “SEO-ing” their About us/Summary section. It’s one of the easiest ways to put the information you want out there for leads to easily access. Filling out as much as you can in the About section is a great start.

  • The “About” summary section gives you the capacity to use 2,600 characters (on LinkedIn, Facebook gives you 50,000!) to explain what you do. Use keywords that your clients are using to find your products and services.
  • Use keywords that describe your products and services in your headline.
  • The “Experience” section also gives you 2,000 characters to show case your expertise. Make sure you include a few paragraphs that talk about what your company provides from a product/services perspective.

How do You know if your Social Media Strategy is Improving SEO?

All social media platforms have some sort of analytics feature that you can use to measure the attention your socials are getting. You can also look into social media engagement tools, which you can download and use to generate tables and graphs. You can compare the social media and website stats to see the effect the former has on the latter. Lastly, you can see the organic changes in your Google Analytics account.

Last Thoughts

Social media is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. It can help you generate buzz around your products and your brand by having users share your content.

As trusted Google experts, our team is here to help with holistic digital marketing strategies including optimizing your Google Business Profile listing and ensuring you have the highest rank possible. Whether you’re looking for SEO tips, social media marketing ideas, or paid media strategies, our goal is to make your business more successful. Get a free audit and see how you can improve your digital presence with us here.

Skills Every Digital Marketing Agency Should Excel in

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A great digital marketing agency should have the ability to learn your brand quickly and be ready to act as your in-house digital experts.  Since the digital industry is so diverse, how do you know if a digital marketing agency is really as great as they claim to be?  

Looking for a new digital marketing agency but have no clue where to begin? Working with a good digital agency that specializes in quality marketing strategies is an obvious starting line. Knowing how to choose a digital marketing agency is essential in your search to find the right agency fit for your brand.

Spending money on digital marketing is a big deal, and you want to find an agency that makes the most of your money and works with your business goals. If you’re tired of being burned by agencies that make big promises but deliver no results, check out our three must-have skills (and top red flags) to watch out for. 

1. SEO & SEM

Across the board, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important skills you can have in this field. Knowing how SEO and content optimization work is essential for running a successful campaign. A good marketing agency should have an up-to-date website. If they’re practicing their SEO successfully you can easily find them doing a simple google search. 

Both SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) form your entire digital strategy on a data and content level. At the end of the day, a great website should have all the key elements of an effective inbound marketing strategy:

  • An active blog.
  • Responsive design.
  • Intuitive navigation.
  • Effective conversion strategy with calls to action.

2. A Solid Team

A great agency should have a team that is equipped with versatility and expertise. Building a team that has experts in their respective fields i.e. design, development, SEO, content strategy, social media and brand development, will only make your agency more sought after and stronger as a whole.

Content is perhaps the core of digital marketing. Content marketing will continue to be a crucial part of the game no matter what happens. After you’ve created your all-star team you should then be able to create high quality, SEO-friendly content for various channels. By understanding how to create an effective content strategy you’ll be able to easily engage and convert to various audiences.

Things can be a little challenging when it comes to creating different content formats. From video to social media, emails, web content, blogs, e-books, videos, and white papers, it can be tough to create content that translates to these different formats. Working together as a team is the best way to face the beast that is, content marketing.

3. Tools and How to Utilize Them

Due to the marketing industry being so technology-driven, you need a good grasp on technology as well as be able to learn it quickly. It is immensely beneficial for a marketing agency to have a solid understanding of marketing tools as well as the technical skills that go along with them. For example, a CMS like WordPress – used by a third of websites – can be tweaked to boost SEO. 

Project management tools are important and its always good to ask what platform your desired marketing agency is using.  Nowadays there are many tools you can use to get the job done, for example Google Analytics, Hubspot, Salesforce, the list goes on. The bottom line is, any agency should be comfortable and familiar with all of these tools.

Now that we’ve covered the 3 top things to have as an agency, lets discuss the 3 Red Flags to watch out for.

Red Flag #1 – You Don’t have an Account Manager

A solid agency will pair you with a marketing strategist or account manager who oversees your business’s marketing success.

Something to look out for is talking to a new person every time you call. When you’re looking for an agency, make sure to ask who will handle your account. If it’s one person, that’s great. If they’re running a call center, look elsewhere.

Red Flag #2 – You Can’t Access Your Marketing Data

If the agency refuses to give you access to analytics, you should find an agency that will let you track your marketing success with them. There’s no reason for a digital marketing provider to be dishonest or hoard a business’s data.

The right digital marketing agency will allow you to see your data, and they’ll talk to you about the analytics as they work to improve your marketing performance.

Red Flag #3 – False Promises

If an agency is promising you that your business will be at the top of search results by working with them in a matter of weeks – it’s a bad sign. It’s always important to ask how if they’re promising you things they cant keep. If they’re talking about paid advertising, then rest assured you have nothing to worry about.

Its always best to find an agency that has realistic goals for you to improve your local search results.

Last Thoughts

Digital marketing is fast-paced and demanding. Understanding an agencies top 3 must haves and top 3 red flags to look out for will have you off to the races. At Onimod Global, our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

From SEO to social media, content marketing and strategy, We can help you gain up-to-date and relevant knowledge that will help you become an awesome digital marketer. Got questions about Facebook advertising or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

Influencer Marketing Tips: Finding the Right Influencers for Your Brand

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Influencer marketing allows brands to easily break into the consumers’ circle of trust in a way that feels more organic and welcomed. It’s relevant, reliable and relatable, making it an extremely effective marketing tool for brands. 

Are you looking into influencer marketing but not sure where to start? Here are our top tips to help guide your search and create a successful campaign. 

1. Know the type of influencer campaign you’re going to run. 

As you begin mapping out your marketing plan, identifying the specific type of influencer campaign you want to run is crucial. This will in turn help you connect with the best influencer and help you reach your campaign goals. Different types of influencer campaigns include: 

  • Gifting. This entails giving the influencer free products in exchange for shoutouts, mentions, posts, etc.
  • Guest posting. The influencer would get to create a post for you that you would then be shared directly on your page.   
  • Sponsored content. You would pay the influencer to share your content or create content that is somehow tied to your brand. 
  • Contests/Giveaways. Using contests as an incentive to get influencers to mention your product, brand or share your content. 
  • Takeover. You would be allowing the influencer to completely take over your social media page for a set amount of time. 
  • Affiliates. Share affiliate codes with influencers so they can earn money each time a user comes through their funnel and purchases from your brand.
  • Discount codes. Allowing influencers to give discount codes for your offerings to their own followers. 
  • Brand ambassadors. Partnering with an influencer who would then regularly promote your brand in exchange for discounts, deals and additional perks from you. 

2. Research influencers relevant to your niche. 

A great place to start finding influencers is by looking at famous, well-known or respected figures in your industry. This will not only increase the reach of your message and build more brand awareness, but drastically enhance your authority within the industry as well. While this can be difficult for smaller brands, it’s not impossible. You just have to prove why you stand out from others in your industry and get in contact with the proper people. 

To support this strategy, set up Google alerts for industry terms to see who is regularly writing content about important topics in your industry. You can also try browsing forums to see who might be regularly answering questions related to your industry. 

3. Research competitors’ influencers. 

It’s not uncommon for influencers to work with two competing brands, as long as both brands agree to it. So, to find influencers that are likely to work with your brand, look for those who are already working with brands like yours. Another benefit of this is that since they already create content or write about others in your industry, you won’t have to do much educating on your niche. 

Finding these influencers should be fairly easy. You can browse industry-related hashtags on different social platforms to see who is already sharing content and engaging with competitors. You can also look through competitors’ pages to see if there are any influencers working with them that look like they would be a good fit for you as well. 

4. Find influencers that already share your audience. 

It’s not necessary for an influencer to be directly tied to your industry to be effective. Influencers who share your audience can provide just as much value. Actually, working with influencers in an industry that overlaps or is complimentary to your own can help you extend your reach even further. It also connects you to your audience in a space that isn’t already saturated with messages from your competitors. 

To find these influencers start by doing a target audience analysis. This will help you to fully understand your ideal audience, their needs, interests and other sites they frequent. This can help you to then identify other non-industry-related influencers that your audience already follows. 

5. Audit potential influencers’ following, reach and engagement metrics. 

Once you’ve identified a few different influencers you’re considering, start evaluating their authority. Or in other words, determine if they have a large enough reach to help you accomplish your campaign goals. An influencer analysis consists of looking at factors such as: 

  • Number of followers 
  • Engagement rate of their followers 
  • Type of regular content 
  • Quality of content 
  • The depth of niche coverage 

Final Thoughts 

A strategically planned influencer marketing campaign that leverages the influencers most relevant to your goals, audience and niche can lead to big results for your campaign and brand as a whole. 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media for Your Business

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As a business, the goal of posting on social media is to generate brand awareness, engagement and drive more traffic to your website. To optimize your social media marketing strategy, the times you post on social media does matter. A well-timed post can lead to greater reach, more likes, comments, shares, etc. It is important to note that optimal times do vary based on industry and user trends. But in general, there are times of the day users are more engaged than others. We’ve put together a guide for the best times to post on each social media platform, making it easier to find your sweet spot for optimal performance in your specific industry. 

Facebook: 

Reaching people on Facebook isn’t as easy as it once was. Organic traffic has been on the decline over the last few years due to it becoming mostly a pay per click platform. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored, however, as there is still massive opportunity. 

During the week, the best time to post on your business page is between 1pm and 4pm. This is likely because it’s the time of day when users have some downtime at work are browning their desktop or scrolling through their phone screens. 

The best days of the week to post on Facebook are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Weekends in general show the highest levels of engagement. And Sunday at 3pm is the single best time to post on Facebook. 

Twitter:

With Twitter, timing is everything. The lifespan of a tweet is only 18 minutes so you only have a short period of time to make sure you’re reaching the right people. 

The best time to tweet has shown to be between 12 and 1 pm. Workdays seem to drive the highest engagement, with Wednesday being the single best day. Tweeting during lunch every week day can help increase your general social media engagement. Additionally, the weekends have shown to be the worst days of the week to tweet, driving the lowest engagement. 

Instagram: 

Instagram has recently changed its algorithm for how the platform ranks posts on users’ feeds. In general, it has made driving traffic and engagement difficult for pages with small follower numbers. It favors “recency,” but does not use chronological order. It shows users posts they believe they will be more likely to engage with. This makes it even more important to post during the time your followers are most engaged. 

If you’re marketing or selling products, the best time to post on Instagram is 11am to 1pm during the week or evenings from 7pm to 9pm. Because Instagram is favored on mobile, most users tend to avoid it during the work day. When it comes to days, the best performing are Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with Wednesdays driving the highest levels of engagement. But the single best time to post on Instagram has shown to be Saturdays at 5 pm. Overall, Sundays are the worst days to post. 

LinkedIn: 

LinkedIn’s algorithm is very different from all other social media platforms. Oftentimes, it will show posts from weeks ago. This makes it even more important to create compelling content that will stand out amongst the crowd. 

Considering most LinkedIn users are business professionals, the best times to post are between 10am and 11am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Weekends and after office hours tend to be the worst times to post. 

Final Thoughts

It’s important to note that this is all a general guide. To be successful on social you really need to know your own audience. Consider their age, their location, their challenges, pain points, etc. It’s also essential to continue to test and optimize. You never want to get complacent because things are constantly changing, especially when it comes to social media. 

If you need assistance with social media marketing, we can help. We’re experts in everything from SEO and SEM to social media marketing and website development.   To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here. To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.  

 

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform For Advertising

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Social media advertising is a powerful tool that can really take your online presence to the next level. Now is the time, as so many companies have taken to digital to promote and sell their brand. However, it is not necessary to advertise on every single social media platform. In fact, advertising on certain platforms may drive your profit margin in the opposite direction. So how do you go about choosing which social media advertising platform is the right choice for you? Learn from the experts at Onimod Global to discover the first steps your company should take.

Identify Your Audience

The first mistake lots of companies make is looking at the amount of advertisers on each platform and choosing in this way. For example, 3 million people are advertising on Facebook, so you automatically choose this platform doing no further research. While the amount of people is very telling as to what can be successful, it is better to identify your audience and which platforms they are the most active on.

Write down the following questions:

  • Who is your typical customer?
  • How old are they?
  • Are they male or female?
  • What is their income and education level?
  • What are they interested in outside of your product and service?

Use the answers to these questions in order to build out your audience profile.

Define Your Goals

This is an important step, because each campaign can be better optimized on certain platforms than others depending on how you want customers to convert. There are also several different types of campaigns on these platforms. For example, say your headhunting company wants IT students to fill out a form on your website applying for interviews. Your goal and your audience must match up with the specific social platform. If you aren’t sure where to start with setting an action goal for your target audience, try starting with a brand awareness campaign. Brand recognition always proves to be an important topic for online shoppers.

Find The Audience

Now that you have your audience and goals defined, it’s time to see which social media platform your potential customers are the most active on. To do this, you’re going to determine which platform your audience uses by looking at the demographics of the users on each platform. For example, the younger age demographic is on both Facebook and Instagram, but they are more active on Instagram. Besides demographics and engagement, you’ll also want to look at how individuals use the platform.

Contact Onimod Global

Onimod Global can help take your social media advertising to the next level. Digital Marketing across multiple social platforms allows us to create visibility for your company in the places your customers are searching, interacting and engaging on social media properties.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Tips to Grow your Small Business Through Social Media

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The value of social media for businesses continues to grow, especially in light of COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allows for businesses to maintain connections with existing customers and extend their reach to new audiences. With over 2 billion worldwide users, everyone knows social media has now become a crucial part of an overall business strategy. But as a small business, joining social media effectively can be easier said than done. Let’s take a look at 5 ways you can start using social media to grow your small business. 

1. If you can’t create, curate. 

Posting consistent content is one of the most important factors that goes into increasing engagement. If you can’t create new content on your own, curate other’s content. Tools such as Pocket, Flipboard and Feedly allow you to curate useful, relevant content from other sources and share due credits. We recommend posting a minimum of twice per week and a maximum of 5, depending on your content type and industry. 

2. Use video to keep your audience engaged and growing. 

Nowadays, visual content is key. Algorithms have changed and evolved to actually preferring video content over all other forms. Going even further, 72% of consumers prefer videos over manuals to decide on a buy. There are numerous types of video content you can create to keep your audience engaged and growing. Consider sharing behind-the-scenes looks at your business, product launches, how-to’s, service examples, etc. 

3. Involve your followers. 

Finding ways to directly involve your followers in your content is another way to maximize engagement. Consider making quizzes, polls, giveaways and contests.  Many brands will create giveaways and contests and require those that enter to like, comment or share their posts with their friends. This is a simple and effective way to drastically increase your awareness among your followers and a larger audience. 

4. Utilize hashtags. 

Hashtags are one of the best ways to improve your searchability,  gain more awareness and expand the reach of your content. This goes beyond just creating your own hashtags. Find trending hashtags that are pertinent for your business: 

  • For your subject matter: #HowTo’s, #Hacks, #DIYS 
  • For your industry: #Food, #Fashion, #Auto 
  • For your audience: #StartUp, #WannaBeChef, #FitnessFreaks 

Research what’s trending among your audience and find a relevant way to involve yourself into the conversation. 

5. Reach out to influencers. 

Influencer marketing is a great way for new and small businesses to gain traction amongst a large audience. Influencers are now seen as more trusted, relatable and popular than celebrities. Consumers turn to them more for advice on what products to buy, services to use, brands to trust, etc. There are a number of tools that can help you research who the best influencers are in your industry and make it easier for you to reach out and connect with them. 

Final Thoughts

To be successful on social media it’s ultimately about giving value to your audience, whether that be through educating or entertaining. Users are constantly being bombarded with massive amounts of content and ads everyday. Meaning you have to find ways to bring value to them and differentiate yourself from the competition. Strategies will differ based on your industry and audience, but these 5 tactics are a great way for anyone to get started. If you need further assistance in social media marketing, or any other area of digital marketing, contact us today! 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here.

Tips on Managing Negative Social Media Comments

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Social media is a unique public environment that has its own culture and expectations. And at some point in social media managing, you’ll have to deal with negative comments on your brand’s page or posts. While some of these comments may be from blatant trolls, others will be clear criticism of your product or service. It’s important to know how to effectively deal with these comments. Here are 5 tips on how to manage negative comments on your social media. 

Don’t ignore or delete. 

The worst thing a brand can do is ignore their negative comments. This can aggravate the commenter even further and may lead them to continue to leave negative comments in more places. This can also look bad to other users and existing customers. You want to remain transparent with your audience. Deleting messages rather than addressing them head-on conveys that you might have something to hide. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t remain true for all negative comments. If a comment is inappropriate, offensive or derogatory, it should be deleted. To make this decision, exercise your own judgement or refer to your organization’s code of conduct. 

If it’s your fault, apologize sincerely. 

The saying goes, “the customer is always right.” Even if you disagree with their point of view, it’s still best to apologize. This is the first step in resolving a conflict. Keep a calm, cool and sincere tone throughout the conversation. When someone is bashing something you’re passionate about, this can be difficult, but it’s crucial to not let your emotions get in front of professionalism. 

On the other hand, you don’t want to admit fault for something you had no control over. If that’s the case of the complaint, lead with something like, “We’re sorry to hear you weren’t satisfied with your experience.” This shows you still care, but doesn’t recognize that you or a team member did anything wrong. 

Take offline if necessary. 

It’s best practice to resolve the conflict privately. Try to shift the conversation off of social media to another place. Whether this be through direct messenger, email, over the phone, etc. After you apologize, close the response by asking the customer to contact you through one of the mentioned forms of private communication. You never want to get in a further argument in the comments for others to see. Depending on the issue, the customer may write dozens more negative replies, which can reflect poorly on your brand. 

Be personable. 

No one likes their frustrations to be met with automated replies. This also looks bad to anyone else that reads the conversation on social. It’s beneficial to have a plan for negative comments, but you want to personalize the message as much as possible. This shows real empathy, authenticity and sincerity. You want to show that you really do care about your customers. See the following conversation between Delta and a customer. 

source:https://www.socialpilot.co/

It’s evident that these messages were written by a real person and are not automations. They effectively communicate with the customer and show that they genuinely want to help. 

Be timely. 

Timeliness is key with negative comments. Most users expect a response within 2 hours. If necessary, follow up with the relevant departments to give your customer a satisfactory answer. Word travels fast on social media, which is also why it’s so important to respond quickly. A slow response can make it seem like you don’t care or are ignoring the complaint, both which can quickly damage a company’s reputation. 

Be sure to consistently monitor your reputation throughout the day, whether it be through Google Alerts or other social listening tools. This will help to ensure no negative messages go unnoticed. 

Final Thoughts

Negative comments are unavoidable, but if managed the right way they can actually do more for your brand than positive ones. Responding to positive comments is easy. Dealing with negative comments is how you show company integrity, sincerity and personability. This is where long-term customer loyalty stems from. So if you want your company to succeed, watch what people are saying about your brand on social media. React to all the comments you get and be attentive to the problems of your customers.

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Updates To Social Media Advertising With COVID-19

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Social media platforms were quick to ban people from creating advertisements in reference to COVID-19. Several industries eager to educate the public about and promote their efforts to fight the coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes were blocked by Twitter and Google. The decision to ban ads that mention the virus came after executives decided that they did not want to appear to be profiting from the crisis. Twitter has now officially revised their stance in order to allow advertisers to mention the virus in select promotions.

Twitter’s official stance:

“In response to the shifting advertising landscape, and in order to support helpful causes during this time, we’re now allowing managed clients and partners to advertise content containing implicit or explicit reference to COVID-19 in certain use cases, with restrictions.”

Those specific use cases will be:

  • Adjustments to business practices and/or models in response to COVID-19
  • Support for customers and employees related to COVID-19

This enables brands that are approved to advertise changes to their business operations and their assistance measures. However, Twitter will still be enforcing restrictions on using content with mention of the virus that goes against the public good.

For example, Twitter states specifically that it will not allow ads that include:

  • Distasteful references to COVID-19 (or variations)
  • Content that may be sensational or likely to incite panic
  • Inflated prices on products related to COVID-19

This is great news for business to be able to communicate to their customers via social media any changes as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. Other social media platforms are joining in on enabling their platforms to be more useful for business advertising. Facebook has also recently launched a new set of Page tools to help businesses update their operating hours and service delivery options to help them stay connected, and operational, amid the global lockdowns.

One of the newest measures to assist businesses dealing with the impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns is rolling out grants for small businesses.

Facebook official statement:

“In the US, we are committing $40 million to support 10,000 small businesses in 34 locations where our employees live and work. Those local businesses can go to facebook.com/grantsforbusiness to see the eligibility for applications, which will start in the US next week.”

In addition to grants, Facebook is adding a gift card listing tool so customers can order digital gift cards for their favorite restaurants and businesses. This is currently being rolled out in the US and will soon be available internationally.  Facebook is also adding some new Page options which will enable impacted businesses to list temporary changes to their operations as a result of COVID-19.

Final Thoughts

These are logical moves from both social media platforms, and moves which will provide benefit to many. To catch up on the latest digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.